Survival In James Dashner's The Maze Runner

You wake up in a dark, smelly elevator with absolutely no memories except your name. That’s more or less the opening scene of James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, a science fiction novel that revolves around survival. The Maze Runner is the first of Dashner’s five book series. In the story, Thomas sets in motion quite the turmoil in the otherwise structured and organized community Alby and Newt have established, getting the attention of Minho, Chuck, and the dreadful Gally.Some very interesting points in this novel are how the characters are manipulated by an outside entity and have no notion of what will occur next, leaving them to fear for their lives constantly. In The Maze Runner, Thomas, along with the rest of the Gladers, strive to find a way out of The Maze. In the first scene of the book, Thomas is greeted by the Gladers after exiting a dark, stinky elevator.Thomas, along with many other teenage boys, are stuck in a maze that hasn’t been solved even after two years of searching, due to the fact that the walls of the maze move every night. He instantly clashes with the resident bully, Gally, but luckily he finds a friend in young Chuck. The day after Thomas arrives, another new person exits the elevator, even though most new arrivals had one-month spans between them, not to mention that this time it’s a girl coming …show more content…
Fear is a major motivator, whether trying to avoid feeling it or trying to face the prickly sensation head-on. For Thomas, it was the latter. Throughout the whole story, Thomas is forced to bite back his fear and take action in escaping The Maze, making others think he is fearless, and causing Minoh to give him the “If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human” (page 3) speech. For others, fear was a motivation to sit back and do nothing, or maybe even crawl in a corner and cry for a couple of months. Either way, fear impacted the novel in a variety of ways and set in motion many

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