the maze runner essay topics

The Maze Runner - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

The Maze Runner by James Dashner, a dystopian science fiction novel, explores themes of identity, survival, and the human instinct to solve complex problems under dire circumstances. Essays could delve into the analysis of the novel’s dystopian setting, the Maze, as a metaphor for adolescence or societal constraints. Discussions might extend to the character dynamics, the portrayal of leadership, teamwork, and the moral dilemmas faced by the characters in their quest for survival and truth. The narrative’s engagement with memory, identity, and the ethics of scientific experimentation could also be explored. Furthermore, essays could discuss the novel within the broader context of dystopian and young adult literature, exploring how “The Maze Runner” reflects or subverts the conventions of the genre. They might also examine the novel’s adaptation into a film series and the comparative analysis of the narrative across different mediums. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to The Maze Runner you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

The Maze Runner as a Thrilling Dystopian Anecdote

The Maze Runner by James Dashner is a thrilling dystopian anecdote of trapped adolescents fighting to get out of a treacherous maze. This inexplicable maze is filled with teenage boys who have no recollection of their life before the maze. The boys have to figure out a way to escape the maze while being hit with fatal life challenges. The Maze Runner is a post-apocalyptic dystopian thriller that involves the unity of juvenile boys to escape the maze. The Maze […]

Comparing the Book and Movie – the Maze Runner

?Have you ever noticed when you are watching a film, based on a book, it never seems quite the same? Well, directors actually do this for a reason. They do this to make the movie flow faster and make it easier for the audience to understand. When comparing the book "The Maze Runner", by James Dashner, to the movie, directed by Wes Ball, there were several differences. First, some of the character’s personalities in the book were not the same […]

Who are the Main Characters in the Maze Runner

The Maze Runner is a book and movie series about teen boys stuck inside a maze. The main character, Thomas appears from a dark box and changes everything in the Glade. Thomas a seventeen year old boy appears into the maze not remembering anything except his name. Everyone inside the Glade has their memory swiped by the creators. Once Teresa arrives to the Glade everything starts going downhill. The blue sky’s turned dark and gloomy and the doors stopped closing […]

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The Maze Runner and the Giver

Both The Maze Runner by James dasher and The Giver by Lois lowry were interesting from the start. Similar to each story is a younger male who struggles within a future society and deals with the themes of control, order, forced removal of memory & history, and the struggle of the characters to accept the morals and values, which the new society has set. The Maze Runner begins with Thomas, the teenage boy whose memory is erased is delivered to […]

Emotion in the Book and Movie the Maze Runner

The book The Maze Runner written by James Dashner, and the movie The Maze Runner directed by Wes Ball, in both adaptations of the story, is about a group of teenage boys in the dystopian society. The boys are put in a Maze as an experiment with no memory of how they were put in the Maze, and their life before the boys were put there and are trying to find way out. The boys are trying to conquer the […]

Impressions of a Book and the Movie the Maze Runner

The Maze Runner is a book written by James Dashner about a dystopian society. James Dashner has written a whole series from this book. There are multiple movies that are based on the books. The book story takes place in the future in a giant maze. Books that have movies made based on the story have similarities and differences. With this book and movie, there are many similarities and differences in the storyline and characters’. In both the book and […]

The Maze Runner and the Main Characters

The Maze Runner, James Dashner, published October 6, 2009. This book is about a group of boys who live in a place called the glade surrounded by a maze, working together to conquer escaping maze and when the first girl ever to arrive (Teresa), seems to somehow know the main character, Thomas. I prefer the book better than the movie because in the book I could imagine everything and loved it. When people read the book, the reader is disappointed […]

The Maze Runner for Readers

In the Maze Runner there are a group of teens teenage boys, gladers, trying to escape the maze who were sent there by the Creators. There are no adults there to help them in the maze. A new teenager comes every month Unexpectedly, a girl arrives, which has never happened before. She is the last person to arrive and tells them that the ending is triggered. There are many of similarities, differences and exciting events in the Maze Runner book […]

The Maze Runner Book and a Dystopian Society

The Maze Runner Book and the movie were both adventurous, action packed, and informational. The book was about a group of teenage boys who were place in a dystopian society every month one new person come up from the “box” and lives in the glade their little society Thomas, a teenager, arrives in a glade at the center of a giant labyrinth. Like the other kids dumped there before him, he has no memory of his previous life. Thomas quickly […]

The Maze Runner Book and Movie

In the Maze Runner book and movie there are action packed chapters and scenes. The movie and book is more appealing for teenager boys rather than girls because action movie are more a boy movie, as well as it is not dramatized. The genre of the Maze Runner is a dystopian society ran by the boys that have been trapped in the maze for three years and are trying to find a way to get out of this puzzle like […]

“The Maze Runner” Themes of Bravery and Friendship

Character Analysis of Thomas: Strengths and Flaws I have selected Thomas as the main character because of his outstanding personal character traits. He is an interesting person with many strengths and also flaws that makes him very human. He is definitely brave, as we see him running in the Maze, although he is also terrified of being in there. He shows compassion and empathy, as we notice both traits in his relationship with Chuck and how he emphasizes Ben, although […]

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The Maze Runner Essay Topics & Writing Assignments

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the publication and genre of The Maze Runner. How many novels has the author written? What genres is he notable for? How did the Maze Runner fare critically upon publication? Do you agree or disagree with critics of the novel? In what ways?

Essay Topic 2

Analyze the narrative style of the novel. Is the story related from a first, second, or third person narrator? Is the narrator involved in the action of the story? Is the story told from a present or past tense? Why do you think the author made these choices? How would the story differ if the narrative style were changed?

Essay Topic 3

Analyze and discuss the character of Thomas in the novel. Approximately how old is Thomas? What indications in the text allude to his approximate age? What characteristics does Thomas display in the first chapters of the novel? Is Thomas...

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The Maze Runner

By james dashner, the maze runner themes.

Friendship is a necessity in the Glade. Without a strong sense of community based on personal relationships, the Gladers would not be able to survive. Relying on one another to fill certain roles allows for a functional society that is self-sustaining.

Thomas is able to make friends after arriving, particularly with Chuck . Chuck believes in Thomas's ability to lead them to safety, but more than anything sees Thomas as his closest friend. Thomas is occasionally annoyed by Chuck, but it is strongly hinted that these boys might be brothers. Thomas also forms a close working bond with Minho . This bond allows Thomas to assume a more active role in the Glader community, and which allows him to lead the others out of the Maze.

Thomas's closest bond, however, is with Teresa. It is a bond that remains largely unexplored by the end of the novel but even the little contact the two characters have with each other is poignant and loaded. They recognize each other as friends even without knowing anything about each other or themselves. Their previous friendship left an imprint that no amount of memory-wiping could fully erase. Furthermore, they each stores some memory of their collective past. In this manner, our friends can be seen as repositories and reflections of our shared lives.

Persistence

Despite having been imprisoned in the Glade for two years, the Gladers have not given up on trying to solve the Maze. Not trying to solve it would mean giving up and succumbing to a sense of hopelessness. Though the task may come to feel pointless, they continue to persevere.

Thomas is able to tap into this spirit when he begins to emerge as a leader. He does this primarily by demonstrating persistence and perseverance when he is trapped in the Maze with Minho and Alby . By not giving up or accepting the traditional viewpoint that a night in the Maze means certain death, Thomas is able to form a plan to keep himself and the other two boys alive. He emerges as a hero who has bucked the trend and given hope to a beleaguered community.

Despite the minor conveniences and comforts the Gladers have managed to establish, the Glade and the surrounding Maze carry a specter of death. Thomas feels this almost immediately upon arriving in the Glade. He only wants to leave and escape. Overcoming this constant sense of fear and trepidation becomes a key point to maintaining his sanity and mental well-being.

Thomas's discovery of the graveyard, and the morbid grave site of the young boy who tried to escape via the Box tunnel, only serve to further cast the environment as one in which life is constantly vulnerable. Awaiting the Gladers outside the protective walls is a world run by monsters where they would likely die violent deaths. The fear of painful and unpleasant deaths, rather than the fear of simply being dead , serves to control the children and limit the chances they are willing to take.

Apocalypse / Environmental Collapse

Though none of the Gladers can remember what happened to them before entering the Glade, clues suggest that a cataclysmic event took place in the recent path. As a result these children have been rounded up for participation in a cruel social experiment to test their will and perseverance, as well as their intelligence and ability to think and act under extreme pressure.

While it is not clearly expressed what exactly took place in the past, the Gladers suspect that the world as we know it no longer exists. As more of them go through the Changing and remember their past lives, this suspicion is confirmed. Alby is so repulsed by his memory of the real world that he has no desire to leave the Glade. When the Gladers do eventually emerge from the Maze, they see the effects of the Flare and the ravaged landscape. This setting, common in science fiction and fantasy, presents a world without order in which conventional ways of life have been all but eradicated. Humanity is reduced a struggle to survive. It functions as a sort of "re-setting" of society and civilization.

Civilization vs. Savagery

The Gladers' treatment of Ben and his sentencing and punishment bring about feelings of intense guilt in Thomas and highlight the savage rule of law that governs the Glade. Thomas does not feel that it is ethical or humane, and that it reflects the mindset of a culture bent on survival by any means necessary.

This savagery is also expressed by the Creators themselves. They have chosen to subject orphans to a horrific experiment, though they believe their intentions to be good. Dashner presents a world in which catastrophic events have driven human beings to resort to their most base and savage instincts. The Creators believe in their efforts despite the obvious toll.

Order vs Chaos

The Gladers rely on order, one of their primary rules, to maintain their way of life. Order gives their lives in the Glade regularity, hope, and purpose. Without it, the crushing reality of their situation would give way to despair and they would give up or turn on each other. Order allows them to maintain a community instead of fighting against one other.

The Maze is chaotic. It changes every night, making it nearly impossible to map and solve. In the Maze there is no mercy and normal rules do no apply. The Grievers have no set of ethics and extreme caution must be employed at all times. Unlike the Glade, it is not a safe place. The Glade is set in stark contrast to the Maze as a place where some form of civilization still exists - perhaps moreso than in the real world.

At numerous times in the novel, Thomas must call on his own will and fortitude to overcome a frightening situation. When he sees Minho and Alby struggling to return to the Glade before the Wall closes, he rushes out to help them. After that, it is his quick thinking and unwillingness to give up that saves his own life as well as Alby's.

These actions also invite prosecution from the Keepers, who feel Thomas has broken the law and must face punishment. Thomas's greatest threat to the order of the Glade is that he questions many of the assumptions on which the Gladers have based their lives. His willingness to face questioning and persecution also requires bravery. Without the will to take risks, no progress is possible. This bravery eventually allows Thomas to show the Gladers a way out of the Maze and on to the next stage of the experiment.

The Maze Runner Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Maze Runner is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

The protagonist feels trapped and wants to escape. When/how does Thomas show his desire to escape the Glade? In dialogue

Thomas wants all the Gladers to escape one day. For example Thomas reflects on Chuck's death, telling Teresa about the promise he made to him. Thomas's characterization as a savior of the Gladers and the resulting guilt he experiences when he is...

How does Minho react to the major change in the Gladers' enviroment?

Minho reacts by immediately going back to study the maps they've been making along the way. Thomas is shocked that he didn't tell Alby and Newt first, but Minho takes charge. As a runner, he wants to check everything thoroughly.

What do the words stamped into the stone of the walls suggest about the world outside the maze? What might it suggest about why the boys are in the Glade?

Chapter please?

Study Guide for The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner study guide contains a biography of James Dashner, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Maze Runner
• The Maze Runner Summary
• Character List

Lesson Plan for The Maze Runner

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Maze Runner
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Maze Runner Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Maze Runner

• Introduction

The Maze Runner

127 pages • 4 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Chapters 21-24

Chapters 25-28

Chapters 29-32

Chapters 33-36

Chapters 37-40

Chapters 41-44

Chapters 45-48

Chapters 49-52

Chapters 53-56

Chapters 57-60

Chapters 61-63 (Epilogue)

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

The Maze Runner is a young adult novel set in a post-apocalyptic world. The story begins in a dark metal elevator, where a teenage boy awakens with no real memories other than the fact that his name is Thomas . When the elevator stops and the doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by teenage boys. Their leader, a boy named Alby , welcomes Thomas to the Glade . Thomas quickly sees that the Glade is surrounded by high stone walls covered in ivy. The Glade, in fact, appears to be a large square piece of land with a few scattered buildings. In each of the four walls, there is a narrow opening.

Over the course of the next few days, Thomas learns that behind the walls lies the Maze , which as its name implies, is a massive labyrinth. The Maze is filled with Grievers, horribly violent mechanical creatures that only come out at night. Since the openings into the Maze, the Doors, close at night, the Grievers cannot get into the Glade. During the day, a group of Gladers known as the Runners navigate the Maze in the hope of finding an exit. On the same day every month, the elevator, called the Box, brings a new teenager, and supplies are delivered every week. On the day after Thomas arrives, however, the Box uncharacteristically returns with another teenager—the first and only girl to arrive in the Glade—who appears to be in a coma.

The next day Alby, the leader, and Minho , the Keeper of the Runners, go into the Maze to investigate a dead Griever that Minho found the previous day. Just before the Doors close for the night, Thomas sees an exhausted Minho dragging an unconscious Alby towards the Door. With no one around to help, and with the fear of breaking the number one rule, which forbids Gladers to enter the Maze at night, Thomas slips through the Doors to help Alby and Minho just as the Doors close. Minho tells Thomas that Alby was stung by the “dead” Griever, and that now all three of them have no chance of surviving the night. Thomas and Minho eventually lure a group of Grievers away from Alby’s body and towards the Cliff , a mysterious place in the Maze where the path ends in an empty expanse of gray light. As the Grievers charge the two boys, they dive out of the way and cause the Grievers to disappear over the Cliff.

By the time Thomas and Minho arrive at Alby’s body the next morning, the Doors are open again and the other Gladers are staring at the boys in disbelief—they are the first people to ever have survived a night in the Maze. Newt , Alby’s second-in-command, has Alby taken to receive the Grief Serum, which causes the ailing leader to undergo the Changing . The Changing is a painful side effect of the serum that causes the Gladers to recall some of their life before the Maze, and no one ever is the same afterwards.

The next few days bring a string of first events for the Gladers. The girl, whose name is Teresa , wakes up from her coma and it is revealed that she has been sent as a trigger for the ending. She tells Thomas that the Maze is a code. Also, the sun disappears, which causes the crops and animals to dwindle and, most significantly, causes the Doors to remain open at night. The Grievers enter the Glade on the first night after the sun disappears and carry of a boy named Gally , who tells the Gladers before he is taken that the Grievers will only take one boy per night until the end.

The next day, Thomas uses the Maps that the Runners create every day to figure out that the Maze’s walls have been repeating words: FLOAT, CATCH, BLEED, DEATH, STIFF, and PUSH. To better understand what the code means, Thomas purposely gets stung by the Grievers to go through the Changing in an attempt to regain his memories. After he recovers, Thomas tells the Gladers that in order to escape they must punch the code into a computer station by jumping off the Cliff and into the Griever Hole, an invisible portal. 

After finally convincing the Gladers to follow his plan, Thomas helps to lead an armed band of Gladers into the Maze. At the Cliff, the Gladers find a group of Grievers waiting for them, while other Grievers cut off their escape. The Gladers find that they must fight for their lives and make a way for Thomas and Teresa to get inside the Griever Hole. When they finally make it inside, they use the code and effectively shut down all the Grievers and the Maze.

The surviving Gladers join up with Thomas and Teresa inside the Griever Hole, and a long, slimy slide brings them all into an underground compound where they come face to face with the Creators, who sent them into the Maze. A woman with the word WICKED stitched on her shirt approaches them with a hooded teenager, and congratulates them for having survived this far, but says there is still one more test. The teenager reveals himself to be Gally, and throws a knife at Thomas while under some sort of mind control. Chuck , a fellow Glader, jumps in front of the knife to save Thomas. As Thomas mourns Chuck, a new group of men and women enter the compound and shoot the woman, as well as the rest of the Creators. The rescuers shuttle the Gladers onto a bus, where they drive through a post-apocalyptic landscape.

The Gladers are told that there has been an ecological disaster, known as the Flare, which has caused widespread death and a disease. WICKED’s intention is to raise children in the harsh environment of the Maze to test their resilience for hope. The group that rescued the Gladers is opposed to WICKED’s inhumane treatment of children and they bring the Gladers to a safe-house, where they are given food and beds.

The novel ends with a memo from the Chancellor of the Maze Trials, Ava Paige, writing that the boy’s murder and “rescue” was a good finale to the experiment. Ava then writes that after the group gets a good night’s rest, they will proceed with stage 2 of the experiment.

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Essay Samples on The Maze Runner

Stepping out of your comfort zone through the maze runner story.

In life, many of us will find one’s self in an unfamiliar situation and will be forced to make decisions and overcome them. In the maze runner by James Dasher, Thomas finds himself in this situation. He is trapped in a huge maze with a...

• Comfort Zone
• The Maze Runner

Sustaining Order and Democracy in Lord of the Flies and The Maze Runner

Introduction In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, the protagonists, Ralph and Thomas, are set up as leaders of the society that is constructed encompassing them. However, whilst Ralph joins the island within a group- incrementing himself into his...

• Lord of The Flies

The Importance of Bravery for the Survival in The Maze Runner

Being brave both physically and mentally brave and working hard can bring success very easily. It isn’t something that someone is born with, but rather they are skills that develop overtime as you proceed onto them. The science-fiction book Maze Runner, written by James Dashner,...

The Maze Runner Movie Review: Movie Adaptation of the Best-selling Sci-Fi Novel

What would you do when you find yourself in a maze without an exit? This is exactly what happened in The Maze Runner movie directed by Wes Ball. The 20th Century Fox released The Maze Runner in the United States on September 19, 2014. This...

• Movie Summary

Why Maze Runner Should Have Age Requirement

Maze runner, the book that is very famous to a lot of people including me. It talks about Thomas, a random guy been sent into the place called the maze. Inside there, he met a lot of people inside the maze including the leader Alby...

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Best topics on The Maze Runner

1. Stepping Out Of Your Comfort Zone Through The Maze Runner Story

2. Sustaining Order and Democracy in Lord of the Flies and The Maze Runner

3. The Importance of Bravery for the Survival in The Maze Runner

4. The Maze Runner Movie Review: Movie Adaptation of the Best-selling Sci-Fi Novel

5. Why Maze Runner Should Have Age Requirement

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Home / Essay Samples / Entertainment / The Maze Runner / Thomas As A Hero In The Maze Runner By James Dashner

Thomas As A Hero In The Maze Runner By James Dashner

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