Celebrating the Spirit of Individualism
One can read into Jack Finney’s tale of conformity run amok any ideological perspective one prefers. This much is evident from the fact that the original 1950’s movie adaptation has been interpreted equally as a Red Scare warning against communist subversion and as railing against the forces of McCarthyism which stood at the vanguard of that very warning about "commies" and "pinkos" lurking on every street corner. The ability of the alien pods to successfully duplicate every aspect of what makes a human being distinct from every other human being except the ability to process the emotional responses that lead to the acquisition of ideologies is a testament to the novel’s central theme being the celebration of the ability and the subsequent freedom to think and believe what one wants.
That the duplicates created by the pods manifest every other aspect of their host’s unique individuality except their passions for anything hints very strongly that Finney was being completely honest when he asserted he wrote the novel without any ideological stance. Ultimately, it must be admitted that the pods have no political agenda for taking over the lives of earthlings; indeed, their only agenda seems to be self-preservation. Inherent within the novel’s celebration individualism as an expression of how one thinks rather than how one looks is the underlying caution that this very spirit is never more at risk than when one is faced with choices related to self-preservation.
The Seeds of Revolution
One of the most inventive and thematically rich decisions made by Finney was to have his alien invaders from outer space take the form of seeds which transform into pods which give birth to duplicated human life. By resisting the urge to create a race of humanoids already given a head start on the duplication process, the route to planetary domination necessitated an evolutionary process that perfectly mirrors the manner by which the best laid plans of men to take over the world must inevitably take.
In effect, the novel reverses the usual process of metaphor by taking the abstraction and making it real for the purpose of the narrative. The metaphor is common enough around the world: planting the seeds of…thought…change…revolution. The aliens arrive and literally plant themselves as the seeds of change. And, like everything grown from seeds, harvesting only takes place after the proper amount of time, care and attention.
The Fear of Technology
Finney conceived his original story just a short decade following the exhibition of the fearsome new power of atomic weaponry. Those bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the effect of ending World War II, but launching a new war against runway scientific innovation and experimentation. The same technology that put a quick end to the war in the Pacific also started the fear that everything could disappear off the face of the earth in the blink of an eye.
A real and very palpable fear manifested itself that the ability to create fearsome new technology was far outpacing the ability control that fearsome technology. That loss of control put human at an ever-present risk for losing control over everything, including the things one had always taken for granted would never be put at such risk. The barely controlled paranoia that things are like they used to be that runs throughout the novel is a direct response to that growing sense of uneasiness and the steadily increasing feeling that the grip on the controls were slowly starting to slip away.
