The Maze Runner
By James Dashner
Summary
When people are sent up into the maze they arrive in a large box and are confused because they have had all of their memories wiped. As they start to stay in the Glade, they become a part of the community with their own job to help everyone stay alive. The Gladers get supplies from the same box as the new people come from. They get supplies from the box once a week and a new person once a month. But, that all changes the day after Thomas arrives because the Gladers get their first girl and everything that has been the same for the past two years is about to change.
The Setting
In The Maze Runner, Everyone has a home that is called the Glade. the Glade is in the middle of the entire maze, and the walls that let the people leave the Glade close every night. That means if you are in the Glade, you stay in the Glade for a night. If you are out of the Glade, you stay out a night with the Grievers. The Maze is divided into eight sections, like a tic-tac-toe board. The first section being the top middle and the Glade being in the middle. At night, the walls in sections two, four, six, and eight, shift and move to make different paths and for two years, the Gladers have been trying to find a pattern to show them the way to escape.
The Antagonist
The Grievers are large, half machine, and half squishy or slimy monsters that have retractable spikes and blades to sting and cut the Gladers. They also have lights coming out of their bodies to find and keep track of one of the Gladers. Grievers rarely come out during the day but always come out during the night stalking the maze looking for any Runners that were unfortunate enough to stay out in the maze too long. It is very easy to hear them from far away because their engines are very loud and echo throughout the maze easily. However, the Grievers have creators that could also be the antagonists of this novel. Their names, are the Creators, and they designed the maze and put the kids in it. They made the Grievers and programmed them to kill the Gladers.
Comparison to The Hunger Games
Although The Hunger Games has a very different plot, the two books are very similar in a sense. In both books there are a bunch of teenagers who are trying to fight for their lives and beat what sick game the makers decide to create. In The Hunger Games, there is an arena where the kids are trapped, just like the maze is an arena of sorts. In The Hunger Games, the entire world has been wiped out except for the US. Just like how in the Maze Runner, the whole world was in catastrophe from the solar flare and the disease that came with it. The genres of the books are both sci-fi and both are based in the future.
The Maze Runner | Official Final Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX
The Movie Trailer
The Trailer and the book have a lot in common. It helps you get more of a visual with what everything looks like, which is very helpful. As you watch the trailer, you see parts from the book that were very thrilling when you read it, so when you see it in the trailer, makes you smile.
About the Author
James Dashner was born on Novemer 26, 1972 in Austell, Georgia. In 2008 he won the Whitney Award for best youth fiction for writing The 13th Reality series. In 2011, he won the ALA Best fiction award for Young Adults, and that was for The Maze Runner. The last award he won was in 2012 when he won the Young Readers Award and that was again, for writing The Maze Runner. Some other series he was written are The 13th Reality Series, The Infinty Rings Series, and The Morality Doctorine.