Essay Questions

Why do you think Miles did not consider that Mannie might already be the "enemy"?

Miles trusted Mannie as both a friend and professional associate and as Mannie was seemingly the same person that he had always been there seemed no reason not to doubt him. The majority of their initial communication about the influx of patients claiming that friends or family members were not who they were supposed to be had taken place over the telephone which meant that Miles was not able to look Mannie in the eye or read body language as they were speaking, preventing him from identifying the telltale lack of emotion that identified those already changed. As well as this, Miles himself was initially skeptical about what he was hearing, and had noticed no apparent changes in Wilma's Uncle Ira, so when Mannie dismissed the claims as some sort of group delusion or mass hysteria, Miles was pleased to hear his skepticism supported by a professional whose opinion he trusted, rather than being concerned that Mannie had an ulterior motive he believed him to be giving an honest, and extremely likely, professional opinion.

How did the absence of emotion change the people of Mill Valley?

It is generally accepted in psychiatry that an absence of emotion is what identifies a sociopath among his or her peers; this also could be said of the people who were changed by the pods and were recreated in every way but in the emotional sense. Feeling no emotion enabled them to hunt down their former friends with the intention of changing them too, without feeling remorse or sadness for doing so. The lack of emotion also had physical consequences as they were unable to feel what it is like to be in love, but only how to recreate the actions needed to give the outward appearance of being in love, negating actual lovemaking and also preventing the ability to have a family. The lack of emotional capacity turned people into human-looking robots able to tick all the behavioral boxes but unable to experience the joy or other emotions that result from these experiences.

How was Miles able to realize that there had been other Mill Valley citizens resisting the invasion in the same way as himself?

Because Miles grew up in Mill Valley, and knew many of the people who were well-liked and influential, he felt that he knew absolutely everybody, and did not really consider that there was resistance among people he had never met before. Coupled with this was the very real feeling of being hounded and chased down by a large group of people which made him feel like he and his close friends were literally the only resistance against invasion. Once he saw the pods leaving he realized that there must have been a much stronger resistance than just the one he, Becky and the Belecec's had put up, because in actual fact they were trapped and would not have been able to continue their resistance. There must have been many more people making earth to inhospitable for the pods in order to drive them back into space again.