The Maze Runner

2009 edition cover
Author	James Dashner
Cover artist	Philip Straub
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	The Maze Runner series
Genre	Young adult, science fiction, post-apocalyptic
Published	October 6, 2009
Publisher	Delacorte Press
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback), audiobook, e-book
Pages	375 pp.[1]
ISBN	978-0-385-73794-4 (first edition, hardcover)
OCLC	299381315
LC Class	PZ7.D2587Maz 2009[1]
Preceded by	The Fever Code (in narrative order)
Followed by	The Scorch Trials[2]

The Maze Runner is a 2009 young adult dystopian science fiction novel written by American author James Dashner and the first book released in The Maze Runner series. The novel was published on October 6, 2009, by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, and was made into a 2014 film by 20th Century Fox, directed by Wes Ball.

Plot

Thomas wakes up in a metal elevator that brings him to the Glade. He has no memory of who he is or how he got there, except for his name. Thomas sees a mysterious creature. He gradually discovers that the Glade is run by two boys: Alby, the leader, and Newt, the second-in-charge, who both maintain order by enforcing simple but effective rules. The elevator box surfaces from under the ground once every week and supplies new food, tools, medicine, and sometimes weapons. Every month, a new boy with no memory of anything but his first name also appears in the box.

The Glade is surrounded by a square of walls several hundred feet high, made of concrete. The walls have openings in them, which slide shut every night. Outside the walls is the Maze, a labyrinth of high concrete walls covered in ivy that changes every day. The Maze houses strange, lethal creatures known as Grievers. All that is known of them is that they are a combination of metal and flesh. The Gladers try to stay alive as well as "solve" the Maze by appointing "runners" to run through it as fast as they can while they track movements of the walls and try to find an exit to escape.

One day after Thomas' arrival, a girl, Teresa, is delivered through the elevator into the Glade. She is the first girl to arrive into the Glade and has a note stating "She's the last one. Ever." She says Thomas' name when she's in a week long coma. Later that day a boy named Ben who went through the "changing" tries to kill Thomas. Alby saves Thomas and Ben is banished that night.

Minho, the Keeper of the Runners, goes into the Maze with Alby to see what they think is their first dead Griever. Alby is stung by the creature, which causes him to attack Minho who knocks Alby out. Minho carries Alby back to the glade but he is too late and the doors are already closing. Thomas runs into the maze to help with no hesitation, becoming stranded with Minho and Alby. When they hear the sounds of grievers approaching, Minho runs away while Thomas uses the ivy to pull Alby up the wall. Thomas does his best to survive and keep Alby alive, and by morning Thomas and Minho have killed four of the Grievers.

After returning to the Glade the next morning, Newt calls a Gathering of the Keepers to discuss what to do with Thomas. Some of the Keepers vote to relieve him of punishment, but others, especially Gally, vote to lock him up as a punishment. Minho, however, nominates Thomas to become the Keeper of the Runners although Gally does not agree. Gally and Minho threaten each other, and the discussion ends with Gally storming off. Newt, as current head of the Gathering due to Alby going through the Changing, proposes sending Thomas to the Slammer (their version of a prison) for a day, and then having him start training to become a Runner. Without an official vote, the Keepers decide to go with Newt's plan.

Alby asks to see Thomas alone, without Newt, and tries to tell him something he has seen during the Changing that had to do with Thomas, but before he can give him any real information, he starts trying to choke himself. With Newt's help, Thomas manages to stop him. Alby then says it "wasn't really him", that someone was controlling his actions.

Teresa wakes from her coma, and tells Thomas telepathically that she triggered the Ending. The food is running low, the sky is permanently gray, the box is not coming up, and that same night the maze doors stay open. Alby decides that, to be useful, he'll go into the Map Room and analyze the maps to see if he can find any patterns. Gally comes back that night, and says that the Grievers will come every night now, killing them all off one by one. When the Grievers enter Homestead, where the Gladers had all been hiding, Gally throws himself at them and they leave.

The next morning, they find out that Alby, weighed down by the reality of the world they were trying to escape to, had burned all the Maps, effectively destroying any possibility of finding a clue. Or, he would have, had Minho and Newt not secured the Maps in the Weapons Room a couple hours earlier. Thomas then gets the idea to compare each Map to the Maps of other sections as opposed to other days, and, after copying a couple maps onto wax paper and layering them by day, they find that the first combination spells FLOATCAT. After a couple days of copying maps and layering them, they find that the complete code spelled out by the Maze is: "FLOAT CATCH BLEED DEATH STIFF PUSH".

During the following nights, the Grievers come back, and, as Gally had said, they only take one Glader a night.

Realizing that they won't get anywhere without him getting his memories back, Thomas voluntarily gets stung by a Griever and spends a couple days knocked out as he goes through the Changing, getting his memories back. When he wakes up, he knows they have to go down the Griever Hole to escape the Maze, and insert the code into a machine they will find. He also remembers part of the world they came from, knowing a bit about WICKED (World in Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department) and his participation in the creation of the Maze.

Using this new information, most of the Gladers leave to try and jump down the Griver Hole. Almost half of them die in the fight against the Grievers, but Thomas and Teresa manage to insert the code, with last-minute help from Chuck to realize that "PUSH" meant to push a button, and it was not the last word of the code.

After exploring the facility they are now in, the remaining Gladers find themselves in a room with scientists watching them. One of them walks out, Gally walking with her. He throws a knife at Thomas, but Chuck dives in, saving Thomas' life and effectively losing his own.

A rescue team come crashing in a couple seconds later, killing all the scientists that were watching the Gladers, and taking them with them to another facility where they have dinner and go to sleep, sure that they are safe now.

The epilogue is written in the voice of Chancellor Ava Paige, a feature of all the trilogy's novels. She reveals that the group that rescued the Gladers is just another variable in the experiment and that the Gladers were not the only group being evaluated. She reveals that the next day, the second phase of their trials will begin. This leads directly into the events of the next book.

Characters

Thomas

The main protagonist of the novel. He is the last boy but not the last person to enter the Glade. The only thing he can remember when he comes into the Glade is his name, a common pattern amongst the Gladers. Chuck describes him as about 16 years old, of average height, and brown-haired. He is called "Greenie", a nickname given to new arrivals. He becomes a Runner with Minho after being the first person to spend a whole night (along with Minho) in the Maze and saves Alby when he is about to die.

Teresa

One of the main protagonists. The first girl and last person to enter the Glade. When she entered the Glade she was in a coma and Newt thought she was dead. She also calls Thomas "Tom". She is also known to help Thomas out of the maze and fight the Grievers in the Griever Hole. She is thin, has black hair and blue eyes, and relatively pale skin.

Alby

The eldest and the leader of the Gladers. He is described as a 'dark-skinned boy with short-cropped hair, his face clean-shaven'. He tries to keep order within the group by having all the boys follow the rules they've set down to survive. He has a very close relationship with Newt, his second-in-command. He was in the group of 30 people who first arrived in the Glade. Alby commits suicide by walking into a group of Grievers, thinking that it was better that he die there than outside the Maze.

Newt

One of the main protagonists and is good friends with Thomas and Minho. He used to be a Runner but is no longer able-footed since he was nearly attacked by a Griever. He is very kind, friendly, and welcoming to Thomas. He is Alby's closest friend and second-in-command and takes over as leader when Alby no longer feels capable. Newt was described as being rather 'tall and muscular', with blond hair that came down over his shoulders and a square jaw. He has a limp that he says is from running from a Griever, but the real reason is revealed to be an attempted suicide in the third book. In the books, Newt is often referred to as "the older boy", indicating that he is at least older than Thomas.

Minho

One of the main protagonists and is the Keeper of the Runners. He is in charge of navigating and mapping out the Maze. As a Runner, he is in very good shape and is described as "an Asian kid with strong, heavily-muscled arms and short black hair." He is sarcastic and a jokester. He tends to react without thinking, which leads him into trouble. He and Thomas quickly become good friends.

Chuck

A young and chubby boy with curly hair who was the newest Glader until Thomas arrived. He immediately becomes friends with Thomas and acts like a little brother towards him. Chuck is a "Slopper", one of the Gladers who handle all the dirty, distasteful jobs the others do not want. He is around 13 years old. He is killed by Gally after a dagger is thrown at Thomas and he saves him.

Gally

The main antagonist, Gally is a Glader who lives by the rules Alby put in place. He does not trust Thomas and shows an immense dislike for him. He is also the Keeper of the Builders. He runs away from the Glade in a fit of rage after exclaiming that he thought Thomas was not to be trusted in the Gathering. At the end of the book, he kills Chuck when he tries to save Thomas from being hit with a dagger.

Ben

A Builder. After undergoing the Changing and attempting to kill Thomas, he is banished to the Maze while still psychotic and dies overnight.

Ava Paige

The Chancellor of WICKED and the person responsible for sending teenagers into the Maze. She appears in the Epilogue in an e-mail.

Grievers

Biomechanical creatures that hunt and kill the Gladers in the maze. They are described as "large, bulbous creature[s] the size of a cow but with no distinct shape". In "The Ending", they are let into the Glade to kill one person every day.

Development

In late 2005 mid-June, Dashner had published four books to complete The Jimmy Fincher Saga, which had been with a small regional publisher. His publisher wanted him to write another book, but he decided he would try for a national book market instead. In November of that year he had an idea for a book “about a bunch of teenagers living inside an unsolvable Maze full of hideous creatures, in the future, in a dark, dystopian world. It would be an experiment, to study their minds. Terrible things would be done to them – awful things; completely hopeless – until the victims turn everything on its head." The book was later published in 2008.^[3] Dashner wrote the book from December 2005 to March 2006.^[3]

Reception

Kirkus Reviews wrote: "Hard to put down, this is clearly just a first installment, and it will leave readers dying to find out what comes next."^[4]

Jessica Harrison of the Deseret Morning News labeled The Maze Runner as "a thrilling adventurous book for kids ages 13+ that will get readers' hearts pumping and leave them asking for more." She noted that it "starts out a bit slow" but as it matched Thomas's confusion and picked up pace as he became more accustomed, she wrote that "it's almost as if Dashner is easing the reader into what becomes a fast-paced, nonstop action." However, she thought the "only drawback" was the "fictionalized slang", saying, "While it feels realistic and fits with his characters, it gets old pretty fast. On the plus side, however, it's used so often that the reader almost becomes desensitized and learns to ignore it."^[5]

Film adaptation

Fox released a film adaptation of the book, titled The Maze Runner, on 19 September 2014. Wes Ball signed on as director and T.S. Nowlin wrote the screenplay.^[6] Dylan O'Brien played the lead role of Thomas,^[7] Thomas Brodie-Sangster portrayed Newt^[8] and Kaya Scodelario portrayed Teresa.^[9] Ki Hong Lee as Minho, Blake Cooper, Will Poulter and Aml Ameen were added to the cast as Chuck, Gally and Alby, respectively. Patricia Clarkson played the role of the main antagonist Ava Paige. Dexter Darden portrayed Frypan, Alexander Flores portrayed Winston, Jacob Latimore played Jeff, Randal Cunningham portrayed Clint, Chris Sheffield portrayed Ben, and Joe Adler played Zart.

Wayne Haag served as an artist on the film, and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Lindsay Williams with Lee Stollman as producers.^[10]

Creature designer Ken Barthelmey designed the Grievers for the film.^[11]

Filming started on 13 May 2013,^[12] and ended 12 July 2013.

References

External links

• James Dashner (author) site (official)
• The Maze Runner book trailer on YouTube