Is The Maze Runner All Hype?

 Hello everyone!

I'm officially back from summer break! I'm sorry for the hiatus, and hopefully I'll be able to stay on track for a monthly post the rest of the year. 🍀

For at least two years, I've been hearing about this series called the Maze Runner written by James Dashner. I learned about it when the series received a film adaptation and my best friend told me about a spin-off series. I decided I would check it out, as it looked like a unique series. However, I feel like it didn't live up to all the hype it received. In this post, we're going to take a look at The Maze Runner, the book which the series is named after, and analyze how well it stands up as a teen novel.

WARNING: This post contains some spoilers for the first book in order to analyze the quality of the story. If you are planning on reading this series and want some plot or worldbuilding elements to remain a surprise, I would suggest reading this post with caution.

Summary of The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner follows the story of Thomas, a teenage boy with no memory of how he arrived in a mysterious Maze with several other teen and tween boys known as Gladers, named after a region of the Maze known as the Glade. He learns the ways of the Glader society and Maze life through its leadership and a tween named Chuck, including the legend that there's an exit to the seemingly inescapable Maze. However, when a mysterious girl shows up and Thomas survives a night in the dangerous Maze, it seems there may be a path to freedom, but at the cost of facing the dangers of the Maze at night with a group of Gladers known as the Runners.

How well does The Maze Runner fit in the genre?

For this part of the analysis, I will be analyzing how well The Maze Runner fits into the Teen/YA dystopian genre through character analysis, plot points, and worldbuilding elements.

Character Analysis

I felt that overall, the characters had a decent amount of development, but it could be improved in many ways. For example, I felt that Thomas and Chuck were the most realistic characters in the book when it came to how teen boys actually behave. Other than those two, I felt that the others were either too mature or childish for their age. While I do recognize that being trapped in a Maze with no memory will induce change in individuals, it seems that many of the boys behaved like adults, which is unrealistic considering some of them were as young as eleven or twelve.

Despite this, I feel there is some redeeming quality to the character development. The boys leading the group seemed to be parodies of real-world leaders. For example, an oligarchy of boys in charge of certain jobs and the two leaders of the Gladers made the decisions about justice and group action while ruling the others through a system reminiscent of feudalism. While this may seem humorous, the actual circumstances and vibes of the situations when these interactions are shown depict the issues of detached leaders well. 

However, I feel like there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to character development and interactions.

Plot points

Despite the cartoonish interactions of the Gladers, I feel like the events of the story advanced the plot well. For example, when the leader of the Runners is unable to return to the Glade, it prompts Thomas to assist him, which in turn demonstrates that Gladers can survive a night in the Maze despite the dangers.

While there are other examples, I will leave it at that to avoid spoiling too much for those who still want to read this book or series after this analysis. I feel like plot development is on par or slightly above standard for other books with the same audience.

Worldbuilding

While I feel that the characters could use some improvement and the way the plot is advanced is better than in other books, I feel worldbuilding is stronger in some areas than others. For example, the Maze descriptions and background were some of the best in teen/YA books. However, when it came to the organization that built the Maze and the history of the Gladers, it could be improved in several instances. While I do recognize the organization was revealed towards the end of the book, I feel that the history of the Gladers could be elaborated upon better and how the Gladers first requested their supplies from the organization.

However, the ending has the biggest worldbuilding faux-pas I've seen in literature thus far (🚨big, BIG, BIG spoiler ahead!🚨). The Maze is an experiment where the Gladers were observed by scientists in order to come up with a solution to a pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. This revelation may surprise some readers and let them down because of expectations that were set through memories the Gladers recovered suggesting otherwise.

When it comes to worldbuilding, it is sub-par for the genre and target audience.

Overall evaluation

While I feel The Maze Runner is built on a unique concept and has a lot of potential, it has a lot of room for improvement. I feel that the first book carries the expectation of a Hunger Games-style story of teens fighting against an oppressive regime. While I recognize dystopian literature often carries some disaster in its lore in order to spur the events that lead to the circumstances of the story, I feel like there was too much emphasis on the disaster portion towards the end and it went against readers' expectations. There are other ways to write a post-pandemic story, but having teenagers searching for a way out of their situation and abruptly revealing the situation at the end is no way to do it. While I understand not everyone has Margaret Peterson Haddix's skills when it comes to dystopian literature for younger audiences, I feel like the first book has too many gaps and blunders, especially considering that it wasn't even Dashner's first book (Wikipedia contributors, 2024)! While The Maze Runner has a lot of potential to be a well-developed start to a YA series, its poor worldbuilding and character development gives it a tarnish that is hard to ignore.

-Alex Russo

Bibliography

Wikipedia contributors. (2024). James Dashner. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:05, August 19, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Dashner&oldid=1240052962