In the Maze Runner Thomas finds himself in a strange lift. He is in a glade with many other boys, and remembers nothing else but his name. Why is this strange maze called the Glade? Why are the odd metallic creatures called the Grievers? Why does the Glade seem to change each time they return? No one knows the answers to any of these questions. But the only thing that Thomas knows for certain is that in order to survive, he needs to run. On a fateful day, a girl joins them with a message. Everyone is left numbed by shock when they learn what it is. Hence begins the adventure of Thomas and his friends in the maze. The Maze Runner is followed by The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure. The current title has been adapted into a movie by 20th Century Fox.

Characters of the Maze Runner

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 was 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. He has a telepathic connection with Teresa and was able to talk to her while she was in a coma.

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 has a telepathic connection with Thomas. 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. 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.

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 himself 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 was a “Slopper”, one of the Gladers who handle all the dirty, distasteful jobs the others don’t want. He is around 13 years old. He is killed by Gally after a knife is thrown at him while he is saving Thomas.

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 by throwing a knife into his chest.

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 haunt and kill the Gladers in the maze. In “The Ending” they are let free into the Glade to kill one person every day.

Summary of the Book The Maze Runner By JAMES DASHNER

This is a story about a boy named Thomas who finds himself in a mysterious camp, the Glade, with other boys, the Gladers. He doesn’t remember anything about himself except his name. The Gladers explain that they are trapped within a walled camp of which one wall is a door to an elaborate maze with moving walls. Each evening, the door to the maze closes, trapping anyone still inside. The maze is also patrolled by Grievers, mechanical slugs that have poisonous spikes and deadly claws. Each boy is assigned a job in the Glade, yet Thomas wants to be a Runner, a person assigned to run in the maze each day and map out the walls.

Slowly, Thomas gets to know several of the other boys personally, such as Chuck, his best friend, Alby, the leader, Newt, Alby’s second in command, Minho, the leader of the Runners, and Gally, Thomas’ rival. Surprisingly, the day after Thomas’ arrival,another person enters the Glade: a girl named Teresa who is in a coma. And somehow, despite not remembering his past, Thomas recognizes her. They also are able to communicate telepathically. After saving the lives of Alby and Minho in a maze, Thomas is trained as a Runner. He discovers a secret door, a Griever Hole, in the maze where the Grievers enter and exit that is off a cliff. Suddenly, things change in the Glade, as the sun disappears and the maze door stays open, meaning the Grievers can enter the camp at night. The Grievers then take Gally and several other boys, one boy each night. Meanwhile, Thomas comes up with a plan to try to escape the maze through the Griever Hole.

After recognizing a secret string of words by using the maps, Thomas and several of the others decide to fight their way to the Griever Hole to try to escape. The boys fight off a group of Grievers as Thomas, Teresa, and Chuck enter the Griever Hole and enter the secret words in a computer .It works and the Grievers shut down. The survivors escape the maze and enter a high tech facility run by WICKED, an organization running experiments on the children. Gal Returns and tries to kill Thomas, but Chuck sacrifices himself and dies instead. The children are rescued by a group of armed adults who escort them on a bus. One of the leaders explains that there have been large solar flares that have destroyed most of the world. In the end, the children are taken to a safe facility and it is revealed that the adults who rescued them are WICKED. As always a lot can be said about this story, but what draws my interest and attention is the idea of patterns and how we can judge and test people based on their reaction to a change in a pattern. Although the maze beyond the walls of the Glade are always changing, life inside the Glade is pretty consistent. The boys have their jobs, supplies arrive on scheduled dates, and life runs smoothly. The arrival of both Thomas and Teresa changes this.

Their arrival is unexpected and the boys then struggle to react to what these two individuals bring to the Glade. Thomas’ new ideas challenge the established rules that have been setup for the protection and safety of the camp, while Teresa is not only the only girl in the camp, but also acts as a catalyst for what she calls “The Ending”. And although our lives may not be inside the walls of a maze, we can find ourselves stuck in a comfortable pattern each day. Yes, maybe some of the smaller details are different, but for the most part, our lives are scheduled and routine. But what would happen if things drastically changed in your life? How do normal people react to change? This is what readers should think about, since it’s what the boys struggle with throughout the story. And often, it’s how we deal with change that defines and reveals the person we really are.

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 may just be another variable in the experiment and that the Gladers were not the only group being evaluated. This leads directly into the events of the next book.