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The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street By Rod Serling

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An important theme in “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling is sometimes fear leads you to look for a scapegoat. In countless situations in this short story, the characters experience pangs of fear that are due the “aliens coming.” Because of their fear, it feels good to blame this situation on somebody else in the neighborhood. The first realization of something ghastly happened when Tommy mentioned his aliens story. Tommy states, on page 360, “They don’t want us to leave. That’s they shut everything off.” After some questioning from Steve, Tommy clarifies his statement by saying, “It’s always that way, in every story I’ve ever read about a ship landing from outer space. Shortly after this proclamation, the crowd gets very …show more content…

For instance, when Les’ car started by itself a group of people began suspecting Les. Steve admits his concerns when he says, “We’re all on a monster kick, Les. Seems that the general impression holds that maybe one family isn’t what we think they are.” Regardless of anything Les said, his car starting like that scared everyone so badly that they started suspecting Les to be connected to the aliens. Subsequently the group turns on Steve because of his home-radio set. Don tells Steve their concerns when he says, “Myra’s talked about how there's been plenty of nights you sort down in your basement working’ on some sort of radio or something. Well, none of us have ever seen that radio-” Undoubtedly, Steve does not want to be the scapegoat, so he gets scared for what his neighbors might think of him. Because of this, he leads them to blame Tommy. As we later find out, every character on the block is innocent; their fears got to them, and eventually led them to believe their fellow neighbors and friends are involved with aliens and monsters. “In “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” an important theme is sometimes your fear leads you to look for a scapegoat in any given

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