Reader Response
Jan 17 2010 Daniel Campbell
I am responding to The Maze Runner by James Dashner. I have read 374/374 pages. The text is fiction.
The main characters include Thomas (the protagonist), Chuck (the deuteragonist), Minho (the tritagonist) and the Grivers (the antagonists). The genre of this text is science fiction because it is loosely based on scientific principals such as scientists wiping childrens' memory and combining machines with animal DNA to create monsters devoted to attacking people. The setting is a giant stone maze with walls that change position each night. The time is unclear at first but by the end of the book it can be inferred that the book takes place in the future. The conflict is that Thomas and a bunch of other children were sent into a giant maze with walls that change position every night. The only way to get out of the maze is to solve it and avoid being killed by the Grivers that come out at night. The climax of the story is when the maze walls stay open at night and the Grivers get in and get one child at a time.
Retell
To summarize the text in 1-3 sentences I would say that Thomas arrived in a huge stone maze with his memory erased. He met a bunch of other boys in the same situation and made many friends and enemies. After surviving many adventures in the maze, he was able to lead the surviving boys out of the maze and confront the people who made the maze. My favourite part of the text was when Thomas went into the dangerous area of the maze at night just because Minho and Alby couldn't have made it into the safe area in time. This was my favourite part because Thomas new he could never survive at night with the Grivers but still went out just because he thought he had a slim chance of getting them back by the morning when the entrance to the safe area was open. This is also my favourite part because Thomas to a dangerous risk just to save Alby who was mortally wounded and was mean to him from the minute he got to the maze. He showed the character trait of empathy and that is why I like that part. This book is really about acceptance. I think that is what the book is about because when Thomas first arrived he was mocked and ridiculed by everyone except Chuck. Chuck accepted him despite what everyone said and that led to Thomas becoming a hero and being accepted by nearly everyone. Also if they didn’t accept him the boys would have never gotten out of the maze.
Relate
This text makes me think about child labour. This makes me think about it because in towards the end of the book it is revealed that scientists forced children to design a dangerous maze and put children in the maze just to see what they will do. The scientists should not have been allowed to put them through that because that is child labour which is an important issue that my class did a project on. If I could be the character Chuck, rather than jumping in front of Thomas, I would have just pushed Thomas out of the way when he was going to be stabbed by Gally. At the end of the book the boys escape the maze and confront the scientist than made the children create the maze. Gally was one of the boys from the maze who disappeared and at the end the boys see him with the scientists and he tries to stab Thomas. Chuck jumped in the way of it to save Thomas. While it was a noble thing to do I would have just pushed Thomas away from the blade because it would save his life but Chuck would still survive. Although that’s what I would do, it would also be hard for me because I would have just came out of a life threatening experience and seeing a knife at that time would freeze me in my place. The scientists that worked on the maze remind me of President Snow from the Books: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. They remind me of him because like the scientists they were heartless and didn’t care for the safety and well being of the people that they watch over. They all sent monsters to attack people.(Snow sent mutated animals to the arena, the scientists sent Grivers to the maze). They all made children kill one another and they all manipulated kids’ mind to mess with them. Those reasons are why I thought President Snow and the scientists were alike.
Reflect
While this text is a science fiction and very unrealistic, it does have realistic parts in it. The thing that I found realistic that really interested me was the scientists. At the end of the book, it is revealed that the scientists work for WICKED. An agency that says that they are trying to say humanity after the earth was burned by sun-flares. They claim that the only way is to experiment on children and find a cure for a disease that cam up after the sun-flares. That basically means that they are hurting and killing people just so that things will get better in the long run. I think this is realistic because while this novel is set in the future, the same things happen in the present day. Throughout history war has gone on and thousands of innocent people have died just because the other countries think that eliminating people will help make peace in the world. The same thing may also happen on a smaller scale too. eg. When people have to pay more taxes just to make Canada a nicer place. Even though this is science fiction, one of the main idea’s come from the real world. I like the part of the text when Ben got banished into the dangerous part of the maze a night. I liked it because it touched on an interesting point......forgiveness! The reason Ben got banished was because he attacked Thomas because he had a bad feeling about him and partly because he got attacked by a Griver and was hallucinating. Ben did apologize to him and got better from the hallucinations but the other boys still didn’t forgive him. They exiled him and the only person who cared was Thomas, the boy who Ben attacked. While it may seem mean to like that part I really like d it because the boys’ heartlessness made that part much more interesting and if the book ended soon after, I would’ve put that as the climax.
