Puppet Show

One thing that I found very interesting about the story “Puppet Show” by Fredric Brown was the way that the idea was introduced into people’s mind. By the use of a ‘puppet’, this idea of a master race and a grand relationship between people, nations, and worlds that could be possible. In the end, when the master race idea was planted into everyone’s head, people began to question the possibility of it. At one point, one of the people even said that ‘it was too good to be true’. In the end, it was too good to be true for them. The people feel a draw to this idea, and yet they feel disgusted with the idea of aliens coming and invading the world with new ideas for our civilizations all around the world.

Though people are all made equal, we differ greatly through means of our religion, ancestry, and culture. We are all people, but this idea of one race, one way of thinking and one harmony seems so unrealistic that people don’t want to believe it. No two people can agree on everything, and certainly, no entire planet can either. I feel that this piece was somewhat illogical, and kind of eerie. Nobody knew how to grasp the situation, and everyone had fear in the end. I feel that it is kind of ironic that an alien was telling people about xenophobia. It said that we do not have it strongly, and yet, wars have been fought, and people have died through the power of our xenophobia toward each other. For example, there are the Salem Witch Trials, slavery in the US and other parts of the world, and the holocaust all as reminders of our past mistakes. Yet, there is an alien telling us that as humans, we see no threat toward foreign planets or the taking over of our lifestyle.

It was definitely interesting also because of the way that it ended. The puppet just fell over dead, and the person running him was in a disguise. Then, he too went into the sand leaving the witnesses with skepticism, fear and probably the thought of ‘who can we trust’.