The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

Is “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” an allegory for McCarthyism? Argue for or against this reading. 

Compare and contrast “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” with one of the following Twilight Zone episodes: “The Shelter,” “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” “Nick of Time,” “The Invaders,” “It’s a Good Life,” or “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Make sure to consider genre and setting as well as thematic, stylistic, narrative, moral, and tonal parallels/differences in your analysis.

How would the moral of this story change if one of the neighbors really was an alien in disguise? Would it matter who the alien was? What if there were no aliens at all? Would this episode still function as an allegory for the Red Scare?

Creative Assignment: Rewrite and/or stage this script as a comedy.

Do a close reading of Serling’s closing monologue. What is he alluding to? How does this monologue interact with the rest of the screenplay?

Examine the roles of race, gender, social class, and age in this episode. Do you think these things are important in the context of this story? Why or why not?

Creative Assignment: Write a monologue from the perspective of one of the characters in this episode. Set your monologue sometime during the events of the story.

Why did Serling choose to give the aliens power over electrical devices? Be sure to consider literary craft, genre tropes, thematic importance, and cultural context when crafting your answer.