Essay Questions

What is the significance of the alien in the story being named John?

Even the narrator herself is caught off-guard and surprised when the blue alien announces his name is John. Curiously enough, 1986—the year after this story was published—would become the first year since records started being kept that the name John would not rank among the ten most popular names for male babies. In fact, it would not be until the 1970’s that John would first drop out of the top five and was once so popular that it was the number one name for male children born every year from 1880 to 1923. In other words, at the time of the writing—though not nearly so today—the author could not have chosen a more common name for her most uncommon character than John. This choice is intended to subtly convey to the reader the far greater commonality of the alien’s circumstances that would be expected had he sported a more alien-sounding name.

At what point does the story unwittingly reveal the stark difference in American society between 1985 and 2020?

At a little past the midway point, Kathy points out how she read in the National Enquirer that the aliens mothership is equipped with enough powerful weaponry to blow the earth to smithereens any time they want. Just before Kathy says this, the narrator observes that Kathy is a “flake” and always has been. That opinion and Kathy’s assertion of fact connected with the spoken reference citation would have immediately conspired to make the point in readers at the time. The National Enquirer was back then a tabloid weekly with a well-deserved reputation for printing schlock, sleaze, and insane conspiracy theories and even most of its readers discounted its facts in favor of its entertainment value. By 2020, this very same reference point to the National Enquirer would be met with a far greater percentage of population agreeing with Kathy’s obvious perspective that it is a legitimate publication more trustworthy than CNN or the New York Times. This transformation in public opinion would serve, of course, to completely alter the meaning of the scene in question.

What is the subtle brilliance of the old movie reference in the opening paragraph?

Before he is identified as a blue alien, the stranger who enters the diner is identified only as “one of them” whose suit is accompanied by a single fashion accessory: a fedora like Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine sports in a scene or two of the classic wartime drama Casablanca. When the greatest classics of studio system Hollywood movies are mentioned, Casablanca is almost always among the top three or four that come to mind. It is a film that is known by title even among those who have never seen it to the point that the very word Casablanca does not seem to have any meaning other than being the title of the movie. Of course, the word actually has a very specific meaning within its Spanish-language origin even outside of its being the name of a city in Morocco: white house. So, ultimately, the choice of Casablanca out of all the other thousands of movie references which the narrator might have made is thematically seamless since the subtext of the story is all about racial prejudice and the protection of white privilege and supremacy and the threat to the “white house” of American supposedly presented by non-whites.