The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street Analysis

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a screenplay by Rod Serling that was televised as part of the Twilight Zone television series, a popular series that began in 1959 and is still televised today. After reading and then watching the selection, I prefer the teleplay over the episode.

In both versions there are many differences and few similarities. Rod Serling, changed updates to relate time period to a modern theme. "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" 1960 version is black and white and the 2002 version is in color. The 1960 version is less violent how the 2002 version is very violent. The characters change for looking and dressing alike to look nothing alike in the 1960 episode everyone is white fancy as where the 2002 episode has people who don’t care who they look like and they don’t have the same skin color.

Imagine this – you feel so alone and scared so much so that you and your neighbors accuse, riot, and even murder each other. Well, this is exactly what happened in the teleplay “Monsters are due on Maple Street” originally broadcasted in 1960, written by Rod Serling. They were all afraid that aliens would terrorize and take them over. While in the 2003 version “Monsters are on Maple Street” they all finger point to the new neighbors who moved in the dark of the night. The fear of the unknown can cause people to turn on each other.

The plot is unrealistic in “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” because, the power does not just go off without storm presence, cars do not just start by themselves, the Aliens are not real. First things first. Look here. “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” is all about the local town people’s power and electronics going out. They start to panic when Tommy starts talking about the Aliens. Steve and Les Goodman cars starts by themselves. The town people get violent. The plot is unrealistic unrealistic in “The Monsters are due on Maple Street.” They also start accusing each other and in the end someone ends up dead. I believe this plot is unrealistic because the

“Bang”. A meteor came through the sky like a jet on a mission. At the beginning of the teleplay, the neighbors said why is Les Goodman’s car starting by itself. No one else’s car started. At this point we think that something is suspicious , because only Steve has power the only one on the street who had power. The people on Maple Street think that Les Goodman has something to do with the power outage. Charlie kills Pete Van Horn because he thinks that he is an alien. They wonder why does Steve have a ham radio; he might be talking to the aliens. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a realistic story because the neighbors form a mob, there’s a meteor that causes a power outage, and Les Goodman’s

Wow! One of the best stories ever created! The story is called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street by Rod Serling. What he was trying to say in the story is humans have flaws. The two flaws were prejudice and suspicion that was in the story. The flaws that were prejudice and suspicion are constantly demonstrated throughout the story. The other types of flaws that can be found are scapegoat, attitudes, and there are weapons that are simply thoughts . . . to be found only in the minds of people, but it was harder to find so prejudice and suspicion are the easiest for some people.

Boom!! Pete’s dead. Charlie shot Pete. Pete was walking around seeing if everybody's power is off. Pete was walking In the shadow charlie got scared he thought Pete was a alien. This story is not realistic because Charlie shot Pete he said he thought he was a alien. Less Goodman’s car stared out of nowhere. A meteor flew overhead they thought it was a spaceship.

One thing that people do when they do not know a certain objective is that they might start to get enraged or frightened and they can start to turn very violent. The show called The Twilight Zone, is a series of short stories that follow different groups of people that face different problems. They all come back to the main theme that humans are really monsters. In the short story, Monsters are Due on Maple Street by Rod Serling a group of people soon find out that the power is cut and they are suspicious that an alien is behind this. It shows two weapons of humanity which are suspicion and scapegoating. There are some ways that suspicion led the humans to turn on each other and how it is shown to go against humans.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you,” profoundly stated by Friedrich Nietzsche (goodreads.com). Friedrich Nietzsche’s lecture is portrayed to be true in The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone is a television series from the 1960s which are all short dark stories that in the end, shed light on the flaws of humanity. The short story, “Monsters are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling, is a science fiction story that shows prejudice and thoughts as weapons of humanity. Prejudice and thoughts are meant to destroy humans. Many signs of prejudice, are shown to destroy the tiny little subdivision, of Maple Street.

In the teleplay “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling, aliens shut down the power and create chaos on Maple Street. Lights go off in people’s houses and neighbors no longer trust each other. Through the action, the author conveys fear and suspicion.

“ Click.” The power goes off on maple street. Midday the power suddenly goes off after a meteor looking thing flies over. As the power goes off on maple street everyone comes outside to see what happened. Nothing was working there were no cars,phones,radios,and no lights working. Les Goodman tries to start his car but it doesn’t work so he starts walking towards the people his car starts up by itself since everyone thought someone on maple street was a alien they all started blaming Les Goodman for everything that had happen. The plot is realistic in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”because power goes off in real life,people do blame other people,and phones can stop working or go dead.

In the drama, ¨The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street¨ by Rod Serling, the plot is advanced by the importance of the events and characters’ actions by giving it interest and dimension. Tommy tells everyone about the monsters/aliens, but nobody believes him;¨They don't want us to leave.That's why they shut everything off,¨Tommy explains about the aliens, but no one believed him but soon after, it sparked the cause of the weird things happening.Charlie killed Pete Van Horn,¨You killed him, Charlie. You shot him dead!¨Charlie grabbed the gun and shot it at a dark figure that turned out to be Pete Van Horn, after that they begin to suspect Charlie is the monster. They all blame each other more intensely,¨I tell you, it's the kid.¨As the stress

Violence has a tendency to attract people's attentions and produce a strong emotional reaction (Getting par. 4).

The history of human nature has been bloody, painful, and even destructive. Nonetheless, before understanding their environments humans used to kill each other based on their own mindset on the ideal of violence, and what it actually meant. Pinker describes narratives of violent acts from the past, that today are foreign to us. He gives us a tour of the historical human violence and how the violence in human nature has changed throughout time. The main idea from Pinker’s book,“The Better Angels of Our Nature ', is “for all the dangers we face today, the dangers of yesterday were even worse.” He provides its readers with explicit violent stories beginning from 8000 BCE to now, and describes how violence has evolved from a blood lost to more of a peaceful existence.

     Hemingway's "The Killers" illustrates that unexplained violence is an integrated part of society.  To acknowledge the cruelties of life is to come to terms with horrifying events that can not be denied.  A person may lack the maturity to cope with everyday life if they do not realize that evil can exist in any given society.