Rod Serling’s message to the readers of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is that fear causes quick, snap judgements that can lead to bad decision-making. This theme begins to appear in the story after a “meteor”, or an alien spaceship, lands near a neighborhood called Maple Street, and intentionally causes a strange power-outage. But when Les Goodman’s car starts suddenly, with him being nowhere near it, the neighbors begin to accuse Les of having something to do with the meteor and the weird power failure. They start to think this because his car was the only electronic device on the block that was working, even though a car starting completely by itself is ridiculous. This proves the point that fear leads to people making snap judgements without really thinking it through, because when Les’ car suddenly starts, everyone immediately becomes suspicious and demands answers from Les. That creates even more fear, suspicion, and assumptions. Which is proved in the text when the character, Woman (she doesn’t have a name), says, “Well...sometimes I go to bed late at night. A couple of times...a couple of times I'd come out on the porch and I'd see Mr. Goodman here in the wee hours of the morning standing out in front of his house...looking up at the sky. [She looks around the circle of faces.] That's right. Looking up at the sky as if...as if he were waiting for something. [A pause.]
