46 pages • 1 hour read
Rod SerlingThe Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
Fiction | Play | YA | Published in 1960A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Allegory
An allegory is a fictional story that directly symbolizes a real-life event. A narrative’s allegorical elements are typically implied rather than stated outright and often impart a moral message.
“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is frequently read as an allegory for the second Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. Like countersubversive anti-communists, Charlie leads his community in a witch-hunt to flush out a faceless interloper. If the metaphor is followed to its logical conclusion, the episode’s message is a liberal anti-communist critique of McCarthyism: The real aliens (the real communists) are outside of the community, and they are waiting for Maple Street’s residents (Americans) to tear each other apart before striking.
Flat Characters
A flat character is a character that is defined by one or two very basic traits. They often reflect stereotypes. Flat characters are considered the opposite of “round” characters, which are complicated and nuanced.
Maple Street is comprised of an ensemble cast of flat characters. Steve is the voice of reason, Charlie the paranoiac, Tommy the guileless child, Goodman the cornered victim, and the rest of the cast are simply faceless members of an angry mob. Having flat characters serves several purposes in this episode.
Firstly, having a cast of flat characters is an economical use of screentime. The plot of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” relies on having a large ensemble cast to function, and the episode only has a runtime of 25 minutes. It is significantly easier to move the plot along if each character can be identified by type.
Secondly, the use of flat and stock characters heightens the allegorical and moralistic messaging that drives the narrative. It’s easier to relate these stock characters to members of our own communities when they are defined by a few thematically relevant traits.
Illusion
An illusion is a deception that is initiated to confuse or trick one or more characters in a narrative. The twist ending at the end of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” reveals that Maple Street’s electrical issues were an illusion specifically created by hostile invaders to instigate chaos. In this instance, the illusion of power failure is used as a psychological weapon.
Part of what makes this episode’s twist ending effective is that the power failure is both a red herring (a misleading clue) and an extension of a real external threat (the aliens). In a way, the presence of this illusion validates Charlie and his neighbors’ paranoia: Maple Street really is under siege by aliens, just not in the way they expected. Therefore, the true illusion is the presence of aliens within the community.
Repetition
Repetition is a stylistic choice wherein the writer deliberately uses the same words and phrases over and over again. In “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” a number of characters repeat certain phrases.
Depending on the context, these repeated phrases serve a number of functions. Because the initial tone of the episode is defined by realism, lines like: “I don’t understand. I swear… I don’t understand” (8) are meant to mimic naturalistic speech patterns.
Likewise, repetition for the sake of naturalism can also be observed when characters like Les and Charlie begin to panic: “You scared, frightened rabbits, you. You’re sick people, do you know that? You’re sick people—all of you! And you don’t even know what you’re starting because let me tell you…let me tell you—this thing you’re starting—that should frighten you!” (9) and “But…but I didn’t know who he was. I certainly didn’t know who he was. He comes walkin’ out of the darkness—how am I supposed to know who he was?” (13) mimic anxious stuttering.
Finally, Serling also uses repetition to create a heightened sense of dread: “There is a world full of Maple Streets. And we’ll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves. One to the other…one to the other…one to the other” (17). When one of the invaders chants this line, it reminds the viewer that no community is immune to groupthink or paranoia.
Science Fiction
Science Fiction is a genre of fiction that deals with technology and futurism. It is often influenced by real life scientific discoveries and advancements. The Atomic Age (1940-1965) was defined by a cultural preoccupation with nuclear technology and space travel; Thus, it was a golden era for popular science fiction.
The Twilight Zone is primarily a science fiction series, and “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is by definition a science fiction piece. However, the bulk of its runtime is dedicated to a realistic setting populated by average middle-class American characters. In this script, science fiction tropes are discussed by the characters more often than they are employed by the writer. In this way, the episode is closer to being a story about science fiction than it is a science fiction story itself.
