The Monsters are Due on Maple Street “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” is an episode from the popular tv series The Twilight Zone. Twilight zone was created by Rod Serling, and first aired in 1959. The series is a dramatic fantasy and science-fiction anthology. The episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple street” is based around aliens. At least from the surface the episode seems to be about aliens. The average viewer would not see that the episode also has a deeper meaning, one that relates to history. This episode is a great example of a term coined in the 1950s, McCarthyism.
McCarthyism is a term used to describe the American fear of communist spies during the Cold War. The original airing of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,”
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He displayed his distaste in McCarthyism in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”. The Characters of the show, the people who reside on Maple Street, are quick to go to blaming one another. Their quick ability to persecute others is similar to McCarthyism. People during post World War II were quick to prosecute others, because of McCarthyism. These actions are abundant in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” for instance when the power goes off in the neighborhood, people turn on each other to figure out who caused the blackout. This insane paranoia led to these once peaceful neighbors and friends to begin suspecting each other of being the monsters who shut off all the power. Every little thing such as a working car, a light turning on, and even making a joke about being a monster caused the neighbors to all place suspicion on each other. And just as soon as one person thought someone was a monster, the rest of the neighborhood quickly agreed. This symbolizes McCarthyism in that people were just as frantic to accuse each other of being communists over minor …show more content…
The boy begins the panic by saying there are aliens and that they have been living on maple street disguised as humans. He says he has read this kind of story in his comic books and this gets into the adults minds. They start getting paranoid. Nothing gets any better once the character charlie begins leading a witch hunt and starts to blame people on anyone doing anything “suspicious”. Everyone is to blame for the violence that occurs on the street. Everyone allowed their fear and paranoia get the best of them and they went along with what the boy said and even along with randomly accusing people. The one character that tried to calm the situation and could tell what would happen with leading a witch hunt and having this go any further is steve. Throughout the story he tries to lessons people 's fear and show how outrageous they all were being. But even he by the end of it fell to the fear of the unknown and his paranoia.
Serling’s opening and closing monologues in “The Monster Are Due on Maple Street” are clear assessments of the situation that is happening. In the opening statement serling says it 's a fine summer day. Barbecues,ice cream and the laughter of children can be heard. This is maple street in its last calm and reflective moment before the monsters came. When first hearing this the viewer would think an actual monster is going to
Everyone being confused, they take this idea very seriously, and start to turn on each other, finding the tiniest of reasons to accuse one another. In the story, Charlie states “Go ahead Steve. What kind of ‘radio set’ you workin’ on?” This is completely based on the claim that Steve has a radio he uses in his basement. The citizens of Maple street are in a mass confusion, and end up ganging up on eachother, even killing one person. The idea proposed by the boy led to people such as Charlie taking charge, and trying to root out the alien. In actuality, their turns out to be no alien in the small community, but the idealism still holds into place, and creates
By the time Joseph McCarthy gave his Lincoln day speech the Red Scare in America was on full blast. Just a year prior to the speech the Soviets had successfully tested a nuclear bomb and China fell to the communists. There were problems both internationally with the Soviet incursion into Eastern Europe and domestically with Soviet spies in the United States. On February 9th 1950 this Senator from Wisconsin took advantage of the opportunity at his speech to the Republicans Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.
A Documentary History (Paperback). Oxford University Press, USA, 1996. Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press; Reprint edition (June 22, 1996). Mitgang, Herbert Lillian Hellman's FBI File, Dangerous dossiers: exposing the secret war against America's greatest authors, New York: D.I. Fine, 1988, retrieved from a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/afilreis/50s/hellman-per-fbi.html">http://www.writing.upenn.edu/afilreis/50s/hellman-per-fbi.html/a>. Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, New York: Random House, 1st edition, 2003.
...y Wheeling speech created nationwide hysteria, and with its impeccable timing just days after the conviction of the State Official Alga Hiss for lying under oath about his association with the communist Soviet as a spy, fueled the fight on communism. (citation) McCarthy war on communism during the “Second Red Scare” did not leave any individual safe from accusations. He attacked government agents, entertainment industry workers, educators, union members, and alienated the left-wing Democrats. McCarthy helped to create the atmosphere of suspicion and panic with his growth in media coverage. McCarthy’s words made for big headlines and the media was quick to cover his stories. This exposure helped facilitate American approval of McCarthy and empowered him to make more accusations on those suspected of subversion. In 1953, McCarthy headed the Government Operations Commit
At that time in American history, paranoia spread around the concept of communism and its potential threats. People began to wrongfully accuse others of being communist or supporting communism, similar to how the characters in the play wrongfully accused people of being witches. Just as those accused of being witches were asked to name whom else they knew of to be witches, those accused of communism were asked to do the same. With this system came the spread of uneasiness throughout the country of America and the town of Salem. Miller wished to showcase the crazy nature of McCarthyism in a way that people would be able to comprehend. The hysteria in both cases was caused simply by fear and not by actual
“The great difference between our western Christian world and the atheistic Communist world is not political, gentlemen, it is moral,” is one of the many examples throughout McCarthy’s speech of him assuming an overconfident or superior tone. His claim to own a list of 205 names in the State Department of communist sympathizers gave support for this arrogant tone, but when asked McCarthy refused to provide anyone with the aforementioned list. McCarthy also used this tone when he said, “The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation,” expressing the idea that no one but the United States’ own countrymen had the strength to defeat their homeland. McCarthy’s tone throughout the article is one of absolute certainty, and gave his audience the incentive to trust
The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...
The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street? is a story about the paranoia of regular people. When the power and phone lines stop working on Maple Street, the residents become hostile. One boy puts an idea into their heads that aliens impersonating humans have done it. This single thought catalysts and soon all of the neighbors are ready to hurt each other for answers.
experiencing a modern “witch hunt” of its own. Senator Joseph McCarthy, provoked by the Cold War, became fearfully convinced that Communists, or “Reds,” were polluting American
... middle of paper ... ... Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. 23 Nov 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism>.
What is McCarthyism? It is the public onslaught of an individual or an individual’s character by means of baseless and uncorroborated charges, basically the repudiation of a person’s reputation. Joe McCarthy was the Wisconsin senator that evoked this era of fear and paranoia by inflaming the current fear of world domination by the Communist party that enveloped the Nation. He did this by announcing that he had discovered “57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.” (McCarthy, 1950, p. 2), later the amount of implicated individuals rose to 205. These accusations launched McCarthy into the national spotlight where he then began his smear campaign against many well-known Americans, which was commonly referred to as “witch-hunts”. Because of McCarthy’s actions, up to 12, people lots their jobs hundreds were incarcerated. He then turned his sights to book banning because he claimed there were 30,000 books written by all shades of Communists. After his lists were made public all were removed from the Overseas Library Program. But he was not finished yet, he then assailed members of the entertainment business. He had writers and actors brought to trial. Many of these people were blacklisted and worse, all without a single shred of evidence. When people spoke out against McCarthy they were thrown onto the communist train, until enough people came forward to rebuke McCarthy’s unprecedented tactics. At this point he fell from political power into dishonor on December 2, 1954. This ended the McCarthy era, but not the atmosphere of paranoia that lingers in the nation today.
Bronner, Ethan. “Witching Hour; Rethinking McCarthyism, if Not McCarthy.” New York Times. New York Times, 18 Oct. 1998. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
being a Communist, with the only source being a report on how his father reads a Serbian newspaper. (Clooney) Without genuine evidence from a credible source, an argument is as good as a blatant claim. McCarthy’s “evidence” is in fact unsubstantiated in itself. Therefore, his accusations contain no basis, and lack the foundation needed to provide solid and subs...
Beginning in the late 1940s, as the Cold War escalated between the United States, the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China, the United States went through a period of intense anti-communist tensions and suspicion. Many thousands of individuals were suspected of being Soviet spies, Communists, or communist sympathizers. Although the American Communist Party was never illegal under Federal law, membership in the party or support of its goals were regarded by many as tantamount to treason. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of this era of anti-communism. The term McCarthyism was coined that same year to describe and condemn the senator's methods, which were widely seen as demagogic and based on reckless, unsubstantiated accusations. Later the term was applied more generally to the anti-communism of the late 1940s through the late 1950s; today, it is often used even more broadly, to describe public attacks made on persons' character and/or patriotism that involve the sort of tactics associated with McCarthy.
Herd behavior is when individuals in a group make a choice and everyone else unconsciously follows them. This usually takes place when under pressure or while in danger. Either good or bad decisions can come from this. In the teleplay “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” written by Rod Serling, the article “Why Do People Follow the Crowd” written by ABC News, and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the three sources all discuss how mob mentality and herd behavior can negatively affect people’s morals and thinking process. Mob mentality and herd behavior will inevitably lead to a loss of integrity and common sense, since members will follow the group and not their on free will, which leads to a negative