Compare And Contrast Monsters Due On Maple Street By Emily Dickinson

Throughout the story Monsters Due on Maple Street and Emily Dickinson’s poem #435, I noticed many similarities. The poem seems as if it was written to match the story. Their similarities relate to stereotyping, madness, prejudice, and poor treatment for people that are looked at as outcasts.

The first three lines of the poem were, “Much Madness is divinest Sense- To a discerning Eye- Much sense- the starkest Madness.” These lines are saying that because she is mad or insane she is godly but, if you are trying to make sense of things then you can easily be driven to madness. That is like what happened in the story. These people lived their life normally everyday. They never expected anything to go wrong, which is why when it went wrong things were so much worse. They never had mayhem in their life so, they didn’t know how to respond. They lost all sense and, they formed a mob mentality. Their fear pushed them to do unreasonable things.

Ms. Dickinson’s very next line is, “ ‘Tis the Majority.” She means that pretty much everyone is like that. An example from the story would be when the aliens were talking to each other at the end. Figure two was asking if the plan would really work and, figure one said it works every

time with little variation. This is because nobody remains calm when crisis strikes because, these people live normal lives and they haven’t prepared. Insane people face struggle often so, they are more likely to be ready for a bad situation.
The final and most important part of her poem is the sixth and seventh lines.

The lines are, “Assent- and you are sane- Demur- you’re straightway dangerous.” This means that if you go along with what majority of people say, you are looked at as sane but, if you raise doubts, you are the by far the most dangerous person. There are two great examples that are shown in the story. The first one would be when Les Goodman’s, a neighbor and friend for a long time, car suddenly starts up when he isn’t even near it. This raised suspicion and, all of sudden nobody trusted him. The second example was when Steve refused to treat Les poorly because of what happened. He thought it was ridiculous to do so and, that made everyone think he was secretly bad as

well.
These two pieces show that when you stereotype or have biased, excluding, or prejudice actions nothing good will occur. You will a fool of yourself and, you can potentially hurt someone else whether it is mentally or physically. Everyone needs to cherish people's differences.