Jake Zahara
2/5/14
Literature
The Maze Runner
Written by: James Dashner
Biography of Author
James Dashner was born on November 26, 1972, and is currently 41 years of age. Dashner was raised in Georgia, but eventually moved to the Rocky Mountains. James went to Brigham Young University, originally to study accounting, but having been an avid reader since he was a child, he decided to try writing. It took several tries, but he eventually created the Fincher series of books, which started his writing career. James met his wife, Lynette Anderson, in Utah. They eventually moved to Colorado and now have four children. James is a well known children fantasy book author, as well as an adult book writer, and plans to write many more books in the future.
Plot
The Maze Runner is a book about a boy who, when we first meet him, does not remember anything, but his first name. He is among many other children, known as Gladers, inside an experiment conducted by the creators, the people how made the maze. It all seems too familiar to young Thomas when he first steps into the fortress that seems to have no exit. He feels like he has been there before, but can’t put his finger on it. Other Gladers notice and don’t like the coincidence that the day after Thomas arrives, not only does another member immediately arrive, but a female. Throughout the maze history, as far back as the keepers could recall, there had never been a girl Greenie (someone who’s new to the Glades). The keepers of the maze were also shocked at what Thomas was capable of, and what he had brought to the table. Within the first couple of days, Thomas sees an opening in the maze walls right as they are closing and takes a courageous plunge into the maze to save fellow Gladers he ha...
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... is always a way to get through things. The Author really seems to emphasize that if you just keep trying, everything will be ok. When Thomas just kept trying to find the clues, and backed up to look at the whole picture it was then easy for him to uncover the maze. Thomas definitely had to stay calm and logical for this to be achieved. When I feel most frustrated or defeated, I have to set my emotions aside in order to move forward, and think logically, otherwise my work gets the best of me, and I won’t do as well. I use these life lessons day to day with school and homework. If I just keep trying, and work extra hard, I can always get my grades up. It’s so easy to just want to give up when we get disappointed but if we force ourselves to persevere we will have success in the long run even if we don’t see it right away, such as Thomas did when he escaped the maze.
Now Thomas from The Maze Runner has to keep moving he doesn’t look back he has to keep on moving forward (or backwards, wherever the maze takes him). Besides Chuck (which was probably his best friend at the time) he left them for
“With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.” – Page 4 of 431 iPhone eBook (177 Pages Left)
People do not have to fly to be hero, it takes much more. Many heroes of today are shown to have supernatural powers that makes them acquire amazing abilities, flying, super strength, skills to manifest anything, the list goes on. Our heroes in the present time are perceived by the audiences' mindset to have special powers but there are times where being a hero does not need to have all the extra tricks. Thomas, a character in The Maze Runner is thrown unconsciously with no memory into a place of the unknown called the Glades, consisting of only teenagers inhabiting the area. He would soon find out the whole place is bordered by a big wall that closes by night and day to protect them from the maze that are filled with demonic machines that will kill on sight. This begins his adventure, eager to learn what is out there and willing to become a maze runner which is equivalent to being a tribute for the greater good in their little homemade society. Having powers might help to become a hero, but in the dystopian novel The Maze Runner, by James Dashner, his protagonist Thomas demonstrates the hero journey in a more natural way by crossing the threshold, meeting a mentor, and lastly having tests, allies and enemies.
The Maze Runner by James Dashner begins when Thomas, the main character, wakes up in the Box and only remembers his name and nothing about his past. The doors of the box open up with a bunch of boys looking down at him and they get a rope to pull him up. Thomas saw that the place was mostly farmland and was surrounded by very high walls. The place was known as the Glade and outside the Glade was the Maze. Everyday the walls of the Glade close to protect Gladers from getting eaten by massive monsters that live in the Maze called Grievers who usually came out at night. Each month a new boy was sent to the Glade in the Box. Every week supplies are delivered in the Box for the Gladers to use. Thomas meets the leaders
With a spout of kerosene and a flick of a match, a fireman sets fire to a house and all the books inside it, not waiting for the heat to reach 451 degrees farhenheit; the temperature in which it is said books ignite. This may seem a strange thing, a fireman setting fire, but in the futuristic world author Ray Bradbury created in his work Farhenheit 451(1951) this is the norm. A fireman's job is to hunt those with books and set destroy all the books with thier flames. In the Bradbury's book, the government has deemed books and all who possess them public enemy Number One, and society has accepted that with no questions asked. Books represent knowledge, difference of opinion and ideals that are now unsavory in the public's eye.
Ray Douglas Bradbury was one of the most distinguished science fiction writers of the last century. Having been penniless during the Depression, Bradbury did not attend college but instead spent countless hours in the library teaching himself everything he believed he would have been taught by a professor (Norman “Obituary: Ray Bradbury…”). Before long, this noble autodidact was writing for mass market publications developing a style of fantasy science fiction writing that would serve as a model for future acolytes such as Steven King and Steven Spielberg (“Bradbury’s prose style…”). In the 1950s, a year in which anti-communist hysteria was most prevalent, Bradbury began to develop an irrational fear of censorship. (Norman “Obituary: Ray Bradbury…”). Bradbury infuses his writings with man vs. society conflicts and despotic characterization which accurately depict his ambivalence towards technology that stems from his fear of these advances eventually leading to the suppression of independent thought, thus suppression of the individual. These elements, found primarily in his first novel, Fahrenheit 451, not only impacted the sci-fi genre, but also made an impact on many readers worldwide gaining Bradbury much admiration in the literary realm.
Childhood innocence contains curiosity, imagination and a carefree fragile mind that has not experienced the cruelty of the world. Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game expresses that general isolation causes the loss of childhood. In the novel, Ender’s isolation is caused by the hostile characters at the Battle School, the mind game and the removal of the monitor. All of these elements prevent him from getting close to others, resulting in isolation, also causing the loss of childhood.
Let’s start with the maze. Everyday at the same time the walls to the maze open and the runners go through it to map this ever changing structure. Every Night, when the walls close the grievers come out. That’s right grievers. They’re pretty much big slugs of blubber held together by slime and spikes that can cause serious injuries.
Thomas and the other people (Gladers) in the society are trying to escape the maze
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a book full of meaning and purpose. Even though it was written in 1932 and wasn’t completely accepted at the time, today people accept it as a work of written genius.
Meanwhile, Thomas learns more about the Glade. He learns that the Gladers have been trying to solve the Maze for two years and that the Grievers sting can cause you to recall memories from the past. The process is painstaking and is dreaded by other gladers. He feels oddly connected to the new girl and also befriends a young and enthusiastic (if slightly annoying) Glader named Chuck. He also befriends a boy called Newt. On the other hand, he strikes up a somewhat negative relationship with Gally, who thinks suspiciously of Thomas and claims that he has seen him, after he was stung by a Griever, in a process known as the Changing. Thomas also feels an inexplicable urge to be a Runner, the people who explore, map out, and try to find a way out of the Maze.
Hey you, Yeah… YOU! Would you want to live in a society where you live in a box for your entire life, and mean absolutely nothing to the just about anyone? For science right? NOPE! Obviously, Societies fall as a result of a corrupt government, Failing Social Structure, and Sickness. It is due to these factors that many great societies such as Greece, Rome, and the society depicted in the book Maze Runner fall.
In The Maze Runner, Thomas and a bunch of other guys from the glade are stuck in a giant maze with no way out. Thomas is the main character and this is how he follows the hero’s journey and becomes a hero. Reasons are Call to adventure, Ordeal, Death\, and rebirth, Crossing the threshold.
The Maze Runner is a 2014 mystery/science fiction film that can be viewed from an archetypal perspective. An archetype can be described as a pattern that can and is copied and recurring symbols or characters. The concept of archetypes came from Carl Jung a psychiatrist who believed that all cultures use archetypes to build stories without communicating to each other about them. Two groups of archetypes are the character and symbolic archetypes. The film The Maze Runner should be analyzed through an archetypal perspective because it has character and symbolic archetypes.
The novel The Maze Runner by James Dashner begins with a teenage boy waking up in an elevator who has no memory of the past, only that his name is Thomas. When the doors of the elevator open up he is pulled into a humongous square surrounding, called the Glade, by a group of teenage boys. The boys in the Glade refer to themselves as the ‘Gladers’. Thomas learns that the Gladers have lived in there for two years and that the Glade is located in the center of a maze which contains a labyrinth of high walls that move during the night and deadly creatures called grievers. The Glade is led by two boys, Alby and Newt; they both maintain order in the Glade by enforcing strict rules and jobs that keep the Gladers busy. A day after Thomas’ arrival an unknown girl arrives in the Glade. This shocks everyone because the Gladers only receive a new person every month, never within the same week. This also shocks everyone because she was the only girl in a maze full of boys. The girl also gives a message that everything is going to change and that she is the last one ever. Right after her message she immediately falls into a coma. The arrival of the girl causes many things to go chaotic including the sun seizing to rise, the Gladers stop receiving supplies from the creators of the maze, and the doors of the Glade that protect the Gladers from the grievers at night stop closing. When the girl, Teresa wakes up she informs Thomas that they both knew each other in the past and that the maze was a code. Thomas and the people who run around the maze to map out the labyrinth, the runners, look through the archives of the maps and find out the code. Then the leader of the runners, Minho, figures out that the cliff they thought was just a cliff was actua...