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The Twilight Zone was born from a tradition of short stories that challenge conventional wisdom and promote social morality. Like much of classic science fiction, it would turn to “what if” scenarios, showing a radically different society that, in truth, was very much like our own. Few episodes rival the mastery contained within “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.”

Written by the great Rod Serling, it is a tale of paranoia, of rash decisions, and the quick escalation to violence that follows. It is not a simple metaphor for the “Red Scare” or a condemnation of inquiries regarding Communist infiltrators during the Cold War. It is not Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It is a simple lesson on panicked humanity and how malevolent forces can turn our imagination against us.

A Black Out

The episode begins with the classic summary of The Twilight Zone: “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow – between science and superstition. And it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.”

Without an object for attention, some concrete source of blame, the imagination is quick to produce its own scapegoat. From conspiracy theories to political boogeymen, people would rather cling to dubious scenarios over uncertainty. We choose a scapegoat over truth, closing ourselves off to further investigation that might reveal an answer, because it is faster and simpler and allows us to quickly find closure to our terror.

The events take place in a generic all American community, Maple Street. At 6:43, a loud noise and a flash of light takes place, and the residents begin to speculate on its nature. The narrator then chimes in, “Maple Street. Six-forty-four P.M., on a late September evening…. Maple Street in the last calm and reflective moments… before the monsters came!”

There are no monsters, only a power outage. Lights no longer work. Phones no longer work. The community is cut off from the rest of the world and the conviences of modern life. They have grown dependent on technology, clinging to its ability to create an artificial world. They begin to panic.

It is here that we should wonder why they can’t handle a simple power outage. We experience them many times in our lifes, a great inconvience but not the end of the world. Why, in a generation less removed from a more simple life, should they experience such an extreme effect in such a short time?

This was not a normal power outage; portable electronics no longer work and even traditional combustion engines without electronic parts fail to turn over. Something is truly wrong. The residents begin to gather, and confusion as to why simple problems can no longer be solved spreads. Reality is no longe real. What we’ve known to be true has failed us. There is no more certainty.

The Predatory Imagination Takes Hold

Two of the men plan to head “downtown,” trying to find a solution as the group, before a teenage boy stops them with the words “They don’t want you to.” “Who,” they ask, and “them” is the response. After a quick back and forth, the boy finally spells out his suspicion: “Whoever was in that thing that came by overhead.”

Where did a child get such information? He had no other evidence beyond what the rest had. Furthermore, why would his information prevent others from seeking out the truth? Paranoia? Fear? What motivated the boy? The boy is questioned further and continues to express his same fear just as earnest as the first time. The one man asks “What makes you say that? Whatever gave you that idea?” to add some reason to the conversation. The boy responds, “It’s always that way, in every story I ever read about a ship landing from outer space.”

The audience should stop here. It should press pause. There is no reason to move forward. The boy just said that it must be true because science fiction always relies on scenarios like this. It is a meta-comment, warning us not to progress forward because to do so is to accept that science fiction has something true to say, even if that truth hurts us. We are in a Catch-22, a position where we teeter over damnation and there is no more truth in literature or there is no more truth in reality.

A skeptical woman in the crowd says what the viewer, if they are willing to continue, should think, “From outer space, yet! Sally, you better get that boy of yours up to bed. He’s been reading too many comic books or seeing too many movies or something.”

This is not a dismissal of the boy but of art as a whole! Art fuels the imagination, suggesting answers to our questions when we lack proof. Could the imagination also betray us, driving us towards a cliff because we are too desperate for answers that we are willing to accept those that bring about destruction?

The men turn to leave again, but the boy pleads for them to stay. There is a hint in the script’s notes as to what his plea means: “There’s a murmur in the crowd, a murmur of irritation and concern as if the boy were bringing up fears that shouldn’t be brought up; words which carried with them a strange kind of validity that came without logic but nonetheless registered and had meaning and effect.”

We now know that the boy is not speaking as a boy but as the crowd’s subconscious, a dark part of them that whispers their fears. Something takes ahold of the crowd as the boy continues, saying no one could leave “except the people they’d sent down ahead of them. They looked just like humans.”

Voices in the crowd deny the boy’s words, but one of the men turns and asks for more information. The boy explains that in his story there was a normal looking family that infiltrated the community. The man then makes a joke about needing to investigate further, and the crowd laughs, but we are told in the script notes that “it’s a laughter that comes from a desperate attempt to lighten the atmosphere. It’s a release kind of laugh. The people look at one another in the middle of their laughter.”

Everything changes after another neighbor, known as “Goodman,” attempts to start his car, fails, then walks away as it starts on its own. At first, it people are happy at the surprise but the happiness is soon tainted by paranoia. Someone in the crowd questions Goodman, saying that he wasn’t part of their crowd before as another points out that the man’s family was odd. It is here that the script tells us, “In this brief fraction of a moment they take the first step toward performing a metamorphosis that changes people from a group into a mob. They begin to head purposefully across the street toward the house at the end.”

The use of “Goodman” is either ironic or on the nose, playing with our own uncertainty over his nature. We should assume that he is not an infiltrator because we do not have any information that leads us to agree with the mob. The mob doesn’t care, and they push him for answers even though he continues to profess his ignorance. Then, technology betrays him and his house lights up when the others do not.

The light begins to flicker soon after as Goodman grows nervous. Then a woman from the crowd says that she had seen Goodman staring up at the sky from his porch early in the morning. This causes Goodman to break down, admitting that he suffers from insomnia while suggesting that he knows his life is in danger. The mob wont have it, and nothing he can say will change their minds.

Humanity Is Lost

The crowd disperses, but Mrs. Goodman watches small groups of neighbors standing around, chatting as they keep an eye on the Goodman residence. Among the groups, some debate over their actions, suggesting that cooler heads have prevailed for the moment. Others are still upset, wanting to find some outlet for their frustration. Steve can’t wait anymore, and he approaches the Goodman residence. The Goodmans warn him, but Steve says that he believes the behavior of the crowd was madness. Suddenly, another of the crowd warns Steve off, saying not to associate with the Goodmans.

The crowd begins to turn on each other, with accusations flying against various odd behavior. As the shouting begins, a figure appears suddenly, and the teenage boy cries out that it is the monster. The people begin to panic, and one brandishes a shotgun. One of the paranoid men from before, Charlie, grabs the gun and fires at the figure as it comes closer, killing him before it was revealed to be one of the neighbors who walked over to another street to find out more information.

The crowd then turns on Charlie as he hysterically tries to defend himself. This is to no avail, especially when the lights turn on at the shooters house. The Goodman reverse the tables, saying how Charlie was so quick to condemn, so quick to kill, using his previous paranoia against him. They are not a sympathetic victim of mob justice but a gleeful participant in it.

As Charlie attempts to flee, he is tackled, but he breaks free and gets to his house. The mob begins to throw rocks at him. Out of desperation, Charlie says he knows who the monster is and reveals it to be the teenage boy. The boy’s mother tries to defend him, but the crowd turns, pointing to the boy’s knowledge as proof. Everyone turns on each other in the confusion as Steve tries to bring order back to the crowd only to be punched. Violence and chaos ensues only for Charlie’s lights to turn off and someone else’s turns on.

As the community is destroyed, we are given a view inside of a spacecraft where one figure tells another that they only have to turn off the machines in that very matter to have the humans destroy each other. The narrator picks up this thread, making it clear that “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children… the children yet unborn. ”

The Dangerous Imagination

It is uncertain how much of the events can be attributed to humanity’s imagination, because much of the paranoia is driven by the knowledge of science fiction held by the teenage boy. It is likely that any kind of monster, be it alien, daemon, or other, can fill the same void. We are provided with confirmation that the boy’s claim about spacemen is correct, but we have no information regarding an infiltrator or any other specifics.

In Stephen King’s The Mist, actual monsters manifest and bring harm to the small community. However, the paranoia centers on how to disperse the monsters, and pseudo-religious fanaticism suggests a human sacrifice to appease whatever gods are preying upon them. The people are able to see the monster, or as much as the monster as possible, and still break down.

In the Twilight Zone, we are provided with closure: malevolent aliens purposefully sowed discord to destroy us. In The Mist, however, the attack is random. Both are two halves of the same coin, and our imagination is what fuels our fear.

A film that combines both the essence of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and The Mist is John Carpenter’s The Thing (more so than the original story version, “Who Goes There?” by John Campbell). In our previous article on that film, we discussed the issue of the monster as part of an old tradition of warning against pursuing science to far. However, the theme of paranoia play an essential role within the film, with its use of a clear monster hiding in the midst of those trapped in an Antarctic hell.

Although the imagination plays an essential role in the breakdown of society, The Thing differs from the Twilight Zone in its emphasis on a more active corrupter. Both, however, depict an outside force that takes advantage of the human psyche to pursue its own agenda. In all three works, paranoia combined with an outside, malicious presence, is able to destroy the bonds that join humans together, which results in their inevitable destruction. Although it is possible that the monsters of each story would eventually overcome humans on their own, their ability to divide humanity allows them to easily conquer.

Each of these works incorporate a view of a darker imagination that was pioneered by H. P. Lovecraft, especially as revealed in his short story “The Colour Out of Space.” However, Lovecraft does not acknowledge any benefits of the imagination. Instead, the imagination is a tool for an uncaring universe to make its malevolent presence known to humanity. There is only terror or ignorance in such a world, with neither being satisfying.

It is uncertain as to what would happen in these situations if humans lacked imagination. Fear would still be present, but it could not solidify into a clear object. There would be general unease, but a lack of evidence would keep us from using our fellow man as an outlet for our desire to fight back. Would this difference be an improvement over our current state? We can’t really know.

The imagination also lifts us up, allowing us to see the beauty in the world around us and connect to the sublime. While imagination without reason is clearly destructive, it is also true that reason without imagination is ugly and unsatisfying.

These works teach us that we must allow our minds to explore the universe and truly appreciate what is around us, but also that we must guard against straying too far. Otherwise, our imaginations will destroy our humanity and turn us into the very monsters that we fear so much.