Inconveniences Muckin’ About

Question: What is the setting of your story?  Does the setting create an obstacle for the characters?  How?

As you know, there are multiple settings in The Death Cure.   In these settings, there are almost always physical obstacles for the protagonists to overcome in order to achieve the end goal of taking down WICKED.  One instance of an obstacle is in the futuristic city of Denver, Colorado where Thomas goes down an alleyway blocked by Cranks.  Another instance is when Thomas and his friends helped the Immunes trapped in a maze escape, but were blocked by Grievers (creatures that were programmed to kill people in the mazes).  Both of these settings are examples of physical obstacles that prevent Thomas and his friends from reaching their main goal.  The settings themselves are obstacles because they present so many dangers to the protagonists.

The settings of The Death Cure are in themselves obstacles to the main protagonists because each of them contain many different dangers, with each being worst than the last.  Going back to what I said earlier, Thomas, accompanied by Brenda (a friend) and Lawrence (a person who works for the Right Arm), took a van to the headquarters of the Right Arm after being captured by them.  By the way, the Right Arm is an organization dedicated to taking down WICKED and Thomas eventually teams up with them.  When Thomas and his companions travelled into an alleyway to get to the headquarters, they eventually found themselves blocked by Cranks (people infected by the Flare).  The Cranks let them go by, but after they were about to completely pass them, the van spun out of control and crashed into a wall: “On all sides, Cranks started thumping the van with their fists.  At the same time, the tires were spinning and squealing, unable to gain traction.  The combination of noises was like something from a nightmare.” (Dashner 223).  Basically, the Cranks were going to break into the van and try to harm Thomas and his associates.  Thomas and Brenda were immune to the Flare, but Lawrence wasn’t and that put him in more danger.  Since the vehicle’s tires were disabled somehow, Thomas and his friends were stuck trying to fend off the Cranks attempting to claw their way into the van.  They hoped that they would make it out alive so they could get to the Right Arm’s headquarters.  This is an instance of how Thomas and his friends are constantly faced with physical obstacles, even when just trying to get from one place to another.

The settings in The Death Cure present physical obstacles to the protagonists and their companions that are life-threatening.  The Cranks, Grievers, and WICKED were the three most notable obstacles to the main characters throughout the entire book.  The Cranks were prone to attack anyone and either infect or kill them.  The Grievers (near the end of the book) were controlled by WICKED to kill anyone who were escaping the Maze.  Lastly, WICKED, the main antagonist (or group of antagonists), stopped at nothing to get the cure they wanted so badly, even if that meant killing people both in the Maze & Scorch Trials and in the real world.  In the end, Thomas and his companions overcame WICKED and escaped to a land where they would never have to interact with collapsing civilization again.

Word Count: 540

Dashner, James. The Death Cure. New York: Delacorte, 2011. Print.

A Futuristic, yet Apocalyptic World

Question: What is the setting of the story?  Is the setting familiar or unfamiliar to you  Why? (It might be familiar if you’ve been to the place where the story is set or it is set in modern-day.  It might be unfamiliar if it is in a time period you haven’t lived during, is set somewhere where you haven’t been to, or is set in a fantasy world.)  How did familiarity or unfamiliarity affect your ability to envision the story?

When I read The Death Cure, I tried to imagine the setting in my head based on what the book says about it, despite the setting being partially unfamiliar.  For example, when Thomas was still held by WICKED near the beginning of the book, I imagined a futuristic compound I’d seen from some movie, but with hallways with all sorts of twists and turns.  What I generally do when I read a book is I try to imagine the setting in my head using the details that book gives me and taking images of similar settings from movies or places I’ve been to.  This is preferably why I choose to watch the movie adaptations of books and then read the books.  It helps me to not only envision the setting of the book in my head, but also enjoy reading it more.  So, basically, the settings in the book are unfamiliar to me because even though I can imagine settings that are familiar to the ones in this book, it is a post-apocalyptic world that doesn’t exist.

Each of the settings in The Death Cure is somewhat unfamiliar to me because I can’t explicitly imagine a post-apocalyptic world that does not exist.  One of the settings in the book was where Thomas and some of his friends flew to Denver, Colorado after they escaped a WICKED compound.  When they arrived in Denver, they were asked by a group of mysterious people to go to an apartment where one of Thomas’s old friends was living.  He and his friends took a cab to get there: “the ride through Denver completely took his breath away…the huge skyscrapers, the brilliant displays of holographic advertising, the countless people-he really had a hard time believing it was real” (Dashner 114-15).  The book describes how modern Denver seems with the huge skyscrapers.  However, it also details a more future-like aspect of the city, which is the holographic advertising.  It also details the immense number of people wandering around the streets, including security personnel who are there to quarantine people who have the Flare.  In addition, the book later describes how walls were covered with posters with warnings about the Flare and pictures of people who were consumed by the Flare completely.  I can relate the city of Denver to Coruscant from the Star Wars Prequels, in a way, because both places have skyscrapers, holographic advertising, and lots of people.  However, Denver is a futuristic city in an apocalyptic world, which is surrounded by the danger of being overwhelmed by the Flare.  Therefore, the settings of this book are not that familiar to me because even though I can relate Denver to something else, such as Coruscant, it isn’t something I’ve seen for myself.

The settings in The Death Cure are ones that are somewhat unfamiliar to me because I cannot exactly imagine a world torn apart by a virus such as the Flare, despite all the apocalypse shows and movies I’ve seen.  We do not know what will happen in our future or what it will look like.  However, we still make books and movies about what will likely happen in our future.  The Maze Runner trilogy shows us that the author, James Dashner, thinks our world will descend into an apocalypse, where the sun expands and burns the entire world and a virus is created that will infect almost everyone.  He’s likely grabbed inspiration for his books from movies that involve zombie apocalypses.  Although, even a writer of a best-selling book can’t possibly imagine what the future will look like.

Word Count: 595

Dashner, James. The Death Cure. New York: Delacorte, 2011. Print.

Defeating the WICKED Ones

Question: What is a “conflict” in literature?  What is the main conflict in your book?  Which type of conflict is it: character vs. character, character vs. nature, character vs. society, character vs. self, or character vs. technology?  Explain.

As I read The Death Cure, there were two conflicts occurring throughout it.  These two conflicts were the fight to control the zombie-like virus known as the Flare and the battle against WICKED.  These two conflicts dominated the book, but I believe the main one was the fight against WICKED.  It was also the main conflict of the Maze Runner trilogy, as WICKED has played a role in each and every one of the books, whether big or small.  With each consecutive book, their role has become bigger and better understood.  This conflict is seen to be character vs. society, in a sense.  Thomas and his friends were fighting to stop WICKED, an organization made up of the main governments in the world dedicated to finding a cure to the Flare virus.  They tried to find the cure by studying the brainwaves of Immunes, to see what makes them immune to the Flare.  So the conflict throughout this book is character vs. society, because the Immunes are fighting against WICKED and their effort to save the world at all costs, even at the expense of killing those they are trying to help.

This conflict is character vs. society because Thomas, along with his friends, must battle WICKED in their headquarters to free the Immunes, who they want to use as test subjects to find a cure.  In an operating room, Thomas was about to have his brain dissected in order for WICKED to find a cure.  After he escaped that room, he began searching for the Immunes, but was confronted by Janson (or the Rat Man), an official for WICKED, and one of his colleagues:

Janson pulled out a long, slender knife, held it up and inspected it with narrowed eyes.  ‘Let me tell you something, kid.  I’ve never thought of myself as a violent man, but you and your friends sure have driven me to the brink.  My patience is stretched to a minimum, but I’m going to show restraint.  Unlike you, I think about more than myself.  I’m working to save people, and I will finish this project.’  Thomas forced his every inch to relax, to be still.  Struggling hadn’t accomplished a thing, and he needed to save his energy for when the right opportunity presented itself.  It was clear that the Rat Man had lost it, and judging from that blade, he was determined to get Thomas back in the operating room at any cost.  ‘That’s a good boy.  No need to fight this.  You should be proud.  It will be you and your mind that save the world, Thomas. (Dashner 280-81).

This scene describes part of the fight against WICKED where Thomas defeated one of the leaders who lost his mind trying to find a cure.  Since time was running short, Janson was going to do anything to get a cure.  He was willing to cut out Thomas’s brain with a knife while he was conscious.  The conflict demonstrates the character vs. society aspect as Thomas works to stop Janson and WICKED’s endeavors to find a cure at any cost.

The main conflict of The Death Cure was a character vs. society one for the reason that Thomas and his friends battled WICKED in order to stop them from using their barbaric ways to find a cure.  WICKED represented all the governments in the world coming together in order to form a new organization dedicated to finding a cure to this man-made virus.  Due to their methods being immoral and resulting in the deaths of many people they experimented on, this can also be seen as a conflict involving the needs of the many (the non-Immunes) vs. the needs of the few (the Immunes).  Eventually, WICKED was unsuccessful in finding a cure and the Immunes were able to find peace in a land far away from the effects of civilization’s collapse.  In this book, the needs of the few won out over the needs of the many and the character triumphed over society.

Word Count: 667

Dashner, James. The Death Cure. New York: Delacorte, 2011. Print.

An Unexpected (but Happy) Ending

Question: What is a “conflict” in literature?  What is the main conflict in your book?  How does the ending resolve (or not resolve) the main conflict?  (Is the ending happy, unhappy, or indeterminate?)  Was the ending an appropriate ending for the book?  Explain.

When I reached the ending of the book known as The Death Cure, I thought this book would have left me on another depressing cliffhanger, despite this being the last book in the trilogy (because some books do that).  However, I was wrong.  To my surprise, this book’s conflict had finally been resolved.  The book is about many kids who were held captive by WICKED (World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department), an organization that wanted to develop a cure to the Flare (a virus that deteriorates the brain and makes people insane) by studying the brains of the Immunes (people who are immune to the Flare).  Eventually, these kids broke out of the compound they were held in and flew to Denver, Colorado where they went into hiding.  More than halfway through the book, they teamed up with the Right Arm, an anti-WICKED resistance organization, to fight against WICKED in order to save more Immunes from being turned into test subjects.  In the end, the kids saved the captured Immunes and escaped WICKED’s headquarters through a Flat-Trans (basically, a portal) to a remote land that was untouched by the Flare.  Filled with green pastures and plentiful amounts of natural resources, the kids and the many people that were held captive by WICKED began to create their own civilization.  The ending for this book is happy and appropriate because most of the main protagonists of the trilogy saved many Immunes from being harmed by WICKED and gave them new lives in a peaceful environment far away from the horrors of the other parts of the world.

The ending for this book is appropriate because almost all of the main protagonists and the Immunes they saved would be able to live in a place where their lives wouldn’t be filled with sorrow or despair.  Nearing the end of the book, after the kids escaped WICKED, they arrived at a peaceful land filled with abundant flora.  Thomas, the lead character in the book, wandered off to a nearby cliff to be alone and rest his mind from the pain he endured for so long. He considered what the future held, for himself in particular:

He was tired, body and soul.  He hoped that wherever they were, they’d be isolated and safe while the rest of the world figured out how to deal with the Flare, cure or no cure.  He knew the process would be long and hard and ugly, and he was one hundred percent positive that he wanted no part of it.  He was done. (Dashner 320-21).

Not all people would consider this a happy ending.  Sure, Thomas and his friends defeated WICKED once and for all and helped many Immunes escape, but that didn’t necessarily mean everything was fine.  Thomas faced many trials in the Maze and the Scorch (settings in the previous books) as he watched his friends die.  He especially mourned for the loss of two of his dearest friends in this book, Newt and Teresa.  After having experienced many horrific things in his life, he will have to live with them for the rest of his natural life, along with his friends, and that is why he wanted to be able to plan his future.  Now that he was in paradise, he could plan for his future, knowing that he didn’t want to be responsible for anything anymore.  So, in a way, the conclusion of The Death Cure is a happy one because everyone’s troubles were pretty much gone and they could all live better lives.

The ending of The Death Cure is debatable between whether it is a happy ending or not.  I, for one, think it’s a happy ending because Thomas and the others remaining at the end of the book got the chance to live peaceful lives away from the collapse of civilization.  However, some think that the ending is not happy because even though these people had a better future in front of them, they would still have to live with the many traumatic experiences they went through.  Despite all this, these people wouldn’t have anything to do with the worldwide apocalypse anymore, as they were far away from it and very likely wouldn’t be pondering upon it often.  Plus, everyone would be focused on creating a new and peaceful civilization.  So, it looks as though everyone’s bright present and futures outweighed their terrifying pasts.

Word Count: 732

Dashner, James. The Death Cure. New York: Delacorte, 2011. Print.

The Scorch in The Scorch Trials

Question: How does the setting in the novel relate to our world? How is it different?

In The Scorch Trials, the book takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where everything is completely different.  Whole cities have turned into a bunch of cracked buildings ready to fall apart and streets and roads are filled with cracks, Cranks (which are people that have been infected by the Flare), and sand.  On top of that, the ENTIRE WORLD is just one big desert and it’s all because of solar flares.   Now at the end of the 1st book, we, the readers, already got a glimpse of the world was like when the Gladers escaped the maze and it was awful to see.  The Gladers were most likely thinking “Oh, once we get out of this maze we’ll finally be able to live normal lives with our families”, but when the remaining Gladers, that was TOTALLY not the case.  The case was that the world they knew and loved was gone and their lives would just never be the same (but they already knew that when they were in the maze).  However, the author of this book might have made this world the setting for The Scorch Trials to show us what COULD happen in the future, but that’s not the case right now (this isn’t what I THINK will happen in the future but who gives a care for what I THINK…).  So you see that the setting in The Scorch Trials is completely different from our world now because the world in this book had been destroyed by solar flares, making it a land filled with sand, destroyed cities, and Cranks.

This world in The Scorch Trials is different from ours because it’s a complete wasteland filled with abandoned and (mostly) destroyed cities, barren plains with dried-up plants sticking out of them, and just a thick sheet of sand and rocks covering it.  When I had read the book, I saw the Gladers having to endure the extremely hot temperatures by having blankets over their heads.  If that wasn’t bad enough, they once had to go through a massive sandstorm mixed with a lightning storm when they were trying to look for shelter.  When I had read the end of the previous book, I was thinking “the Gladers are gonna have to adapt to their new surroundings”, what with all this harsh climate coming around.  Check out this excerpt from when Thomas and the other Gladers got their real first glimpse of what their world was like: “It was a wasteland.  In front of him, a flat pan of dry and lifeless earth stretched as far as he could see.  Not a single tree.  Not a bush.  No hills or valleys.  Just an orange-yellow sea of dust and rocks; wavering currents of heated air boiled on the horizon like steam, floating upward, as if any life out there was melting toward the cloudless and pale blue sky.  Thomas turned in a circle, didn’t see much change until he faced the opposite direction.  A line of jagged and barren mountains rose far in the distance.  In front of those mountains, maybe halfway between there and where they now stood, a cluster of buildings sat squatting together like a pile of abandoned boxes.” (Dashner 94 to 95).  So you can clearly see now just how messed up the setting is in this book.  Also, if you pay attention you can see as well how me and the book described the setting in similar ways, but that’s because I took a few examples from different parts of the book to give you a better summarization of the setting than this one.  Other from that, there’s not much to describe.  It’s all there: jagged and barren mountains, clusters of buildings, an orange-yellow sea of dust and rocks.  However, this description hasn’t mentioned Cranks.  At the end of the 1st book, when Thomas and the other Gladers were escorted out of the outer part of the maze onto a bus by some random apocalyptic warriors (this is very descriptive), there were Cranks banging and hitting the bus as it moved faster through the streets of the abandoned towns.  Of course, the book described everything being a huge blur because there was a huge rainstorm going on at that time.

So now you see how (completely) different the world in The Scorch Trials is from our world.  You can see how deserted the entirety of the world looks.  I bet if you were to go up into space and look at the world from there, it would probably look like a huge brown sphere just floating in space. Although, I just wanted to point out to you that I don’t really think that our world will end up like the world in The Scorch Trials.  Sure, there’s issues  such as climate change (for some stupid reason, people are thinking that humans are accelerating the process of it), diseases arising throughout different part of the world, and supposed evidence that the sun will expand and engulf the Earth in flames 7 billion years from now.  Most of all, this is a science-fiction book that has a dystopian setting based on an author’s point of view of what he thinks or fears will happen to the world in the future.  Now you have to use common sense when you’re looking at my evidence.  First off, it is possible for weather to generate a sandstorm and a lightning storm at the same time in the same place, but in The Scorch Trials it’s more common and in our day it (seems) to be rare because sandstorms only happen in certain parts of the world.  Secondly, there are diseases in our world, but I highly doubt that there will be one that turns someone into a zombie.  Think about it, there have been diseases throughout history and not one of them involves someone turning into a zombie.  Thirdly, the Sun expanding is just very MERE speculation, meaning that it’s just predictions of what will happen to the Sun in 7 billion years and it predictions of what will happen in 7 BILLION YEARS (that’s a LOOOOOOOOOONG time from now and I think we’ll all be gone long before then).  Finally, this is just the POINT OF VIEW from the author about what he thinks will happen to our world in the future.  It’s just his POINT OF VIEW, it’s not like it will come true.  Now this is not to say that I don’t like the book, I’m just telling you that there are people out there that have concerns of what will happen in the future and I’m telling you definitely not happen in the future.  However, to get back to the point I made in the beginning, this setting in The Scorch Trials is CLEARLY different from our world today and with all the evidence I just gave, there’s really no need to explain it any further.

Dashner, James. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. New York: Delacorte, 2010. Print.

The Mysteries of The Scorch Trials

Question: How do any of the following play a part in the plot of your novel: Chance or Coincidence? Mystery? Dilemma (when a character has an important decision and can’t decide what to do)?

When I had read Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, there was some weird stuff going on throughout the book.  An example of this was how Thomas’s memories suddenly came back to him and how he and Teresa AND their past selves play crucial roles in WICKED’s plan.  Similar to the 1st book, this mystery and a few others made it difficult to understand the plot of the book.  However, the 1st book was a lot more weird and mysterious which made it quite hard to understand what the plot was actually about, but it turns out the 1st book was like a prelude to the 2nd and 3rd books in The Maze Runner Series.  Just like the last book, these mysteries kept making me think “what’s going to happen next” and “I’m so nervous!  Will someone important ACTUALLY DIE?!”  and I just wanted to keep reading the book to see what would happen next and when we, the readers, would get some answers to the big mystery that makes us want to read the book.  So you see, mystery is a very important aspect of this book because it keeps me wanting to read more of the book to see what happens during and after each exciting moment in it.

Mystery plays a very crucial role in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials because it makes us, the readers, of the book want to read more and more of it so that we can eventually solve the big mystery at the end of it.  Now to restate what I have said, the main mystery concept in this book is who were Thomas and Teresa BEFORE the Maze and the Scorch Trials.  For most of the book, Thomas has been getting some of his memories back and in them he sees himself working for WICKED, but the 1st book already told us that.  What it DIDN’T really reveal to us was how they both were important to WICKED.  Even at the end of the book, their past lives STILL remained mostly a mystery.  So here is one of Thomas’s recovered memories to clarify how mysterious and vague they are: “Thomas is fifteen. He doesn’t know how he knows this. Something to do with the timing of the memory. Is it a memory? He and Teresa are standing in front of a massive bank of screens, each one showing various images from the Glade and the Maze. Some of the views are moving, and he knows why. These camera shots are coming from beetle blades, and every once in a while they have to change position. When they do, it’s like looking through the eyes of a rat. “I can’t believe they’re all dead,” Teresa says. Thomas is confused. Once again he doesn’t quite understand what’s happening. He’s inside this boy who’s supposed to be him, but he doesn’t know what Teresa’s talking about. Obviously not the Gladers—on one screen he can see Minho and Newt walking toward the forest; on another, Gally sitting on a bench. Then Alby yelling at someone Thomas doesn’t recognize. “We knew it would happen,” he finally responds, not sure why he said it. “It’s still hard to take.” They aren’t looking at each other, just analyzing the screens. “Now it’s up to us. And the people in the barracks.” “That’s a good thing,” Thomas says. “I almost feel as sorry for them as I do for the Gladers. Almost.” Thomas wonders what this means as his younger dream version clears his throat. “Do you think we’ve learned enough? Do you really think we can pull this off with all the original Creators dead?” “We have to, Tom.” Teresa steps over to him and grabs his hand. He looks down at her but he can’t read her expression. “Everything’s in place. We have a year to train the replacements and get ready.” “But it’s not right. How can we ask them to—” Teresa rolls her eyes and squeezes his hand so hard it hurts. “They know what they’re getting into. No more talking like that.” “Yeah.” Somehow Thomas knows this version of himself in the vision he’s seeing feels dead inside. His words mean nothing. “All that matters now are the patterns. The killzone. Nothing else.” Teresa nodded. “No matter how many die or get hurt. If the Variables don’t work, they’ll end up the same anyway. Everyone will.” “The patterns,” Thomas says. Teresa squeezes his hand. “The patterns.” (Dashner 273 to 275).  This quote basically describes the time in which Thomas and Teresa are working for WICKED and are studying the Glade.  Now, this quote is very weird and vague because they’re talking about all these sorts of weird terms, pronouns, and vague stuff that doesn’t actually make any sense.  The definitions of these “Variables” and “patterns” are unknown to us throughout the entire book and have not once been explained.  They’re also talking about all these people that the original Creators are dead and that they’re saying “it’s up to us. And the people in the barracks”.  This also does not make a whole lot of sense considering we do NOT EVEN KNOW who the “people in the barracks” are and how the original Creators died.  It’s too confusing and vague to even get a good idea of what all of Thomas and Teresa’s memories about WICKED mean and pretty much every memory Thomas gets that relates to him working for WICKED is pretty vague as well.

So when I read Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, the mysteries in it were very interesting and vague and, and they only got more vague as I reached the end of the book.  At this time, Thomas had woken up from a dream in a white room and was told by Teresa, through telepathy, that Thomas was still on-board the Berg (the Safe Haven) and that she and the others were taken to a dormitory.  All these mysteries are vague and confusing, I know, but even though I hate it when something’s vague, I want to continue to read more of the book and see where that vague aspect pops up again and if it’s less vague than before.  However, when you see something as vague as the quote I talked about, you have all these questions that you feel need answering and the rule is when you have one question, a ton more pop up out of nowhere.  That’s exactly what happened at the end of The Scorch Trials, I was left with a lot of questions unanswered thinking that all of my questions were answered and this once again disappointed me (just like in the last book).  However, just like the last book, I believe the author’s intent was to outweigh the amount of disappointment from these questions with the excitement, tension, and other aspects of the book.  So once again, this book gives me enough motive (again, just like the last book) to read the 3rd book AND watch the 3rd movie.

Dashner, James. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. New York: Delacorte, 2010. Print.

Survival in the Scorch

Question: Characterize the main conflicts: physical, moral, or emotional. You have to first decide what the main conflict is or the main conflicts are. Think of what the protagonist desires and who or what is keeping him/her from getting what he/she wants. Is that conflict physical (how?), moral (how?), or emotional (how? what emotion(s) and why?).

As I read through the Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, I saw that there were quite a few conflicts occurring throughout the book, such as finding out why WICKED put the Gladers through these trials, trying to finish the Scorch Trials, and trying to recover everyone’s memories (mainly Thomas, Aris, and Teresa’s memories).  However, I came to the conclusion that the conflict that mainly dominated the entirety of the book was trying to make it through the Scorch Trials so they could get to the Safe Haven and cure themselves of the Flare.  I had previously stated that this conflict was all but resolved because WICKED has still not explained how every result they get from these trials will help them find a cure for the Flare.  Also, you should have noticed that I said that this conflict wasn’t COMPLETELY resolved, meaning that at least part or most of the conflict was resolved.  The part that WAS resolved was where the Gladers and Group B, who were another group of teenagers that were tested by WICKED (except they were composed of all girls and one boy), managed to reach the Safe Haven by fighting off a bunch of bio-mechanical monstrosities created by WICKED, however not everyone managed to make it.  Comparing that to the 1st book, the Gladers had to fight off a ton of Grievers, which were also a bunch of monstrosities created by WICKED, in order to make it through the maze and not all the Gladers made it out, although a lot more people died in the 1st book rather than in the 2nd book.  In short, this conflict is (clearly) physical because the teenagers that were trying to make it to the Safe Haven had to fight off a great many monstrosities as their final task.

The main conflict throughout Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials was a physical one because these teenagers had the task of completing the Scorch Trials in order to make it to the Safe Haven and escape the horrors of the desert-like wasteland that is the entire world.  To be more specific, the Gladers and Group B had to fend off a ton of bio-mechanical monstrosities covered with wrinkles, glowing orange bulbs, and thin blades sticking out of their fingers, toes, and elbows.  Honestly, that’s a lot more frightening considering these creatures are the about the size of a human and the way they were described in the book makes me want to throw-up a little (no joke).  Conveniently, there was one abomination for every teenager there so that each teenager could fight their own monster.  So, here is an excerpt from the battle between Thomas and one of the monsters to explain in detail how it happened: “Right before he reached the creature, Thomas made a decision.  He dropped to slide on his knees and shins and swung a sword-like weapon in an arc behind and around him, slamming the blade into the monster’s left leg with a full and powerful two-handed thrust.  The knife cut an inch into its skin but then clanked against something hard enough to send a jolt shivering up both of Thomas’s arms.  The creature didn’t move, didn’t retract, didn’t let out any sort of sound, human or inhuman.  Instead, it swiped downward with both blade-studded hands where Thomas now knelt before it, his sword embedded in the monster’s flesh.  Thomas jerked it free and lunged backward just as those blades clattered against each other where his head had been.  He fell on his back and scooted away from the creature as it took two steps forward, kicking out with the knives on its feet, barely missing Thomas.  The monster let out a roar this time — a sound almost exactly like the haunted moans of the Grievers — and dropped to the ground, thrashing its arms, trying to impale Thomas.  Thomas spun away, rolling three times as he heard metal tips scraping along the dirt-packed ground.  He finally took a chance and jumped to his feet, immediately sprinting several yards away before turning around, sword gripped in his hands.” (Dashner 332 to 333).  You realize now that this battle is similar to that of the battle between the Gladers and the Grievers.  Meaning, that these creatures are very similar to the Grievers.  Their skin is green and wrinkly, they have a machine-like exoskeleton, and they have a roar similar to that of the Grievers.  However, these creatures are humanoid-looking, they don’t have a face, they don’t have a name, and they have blades sticking out of them (whereas the Grievers didn’t).  The battle wasn’t as exciting as the similar battle in the 1st book, but it did make up for that with blustering winds and thunder and lightning, which made it all the more risky.  Thomas and the others probably still felt as afraid when fighting these creatures, even though they weren’t as big, scary, and fast as the Grievers.  When Thomas hit this creature and saw that it was partly made of metal, he probably thought these creatures couldn’t be defeated, that they were just as tough as the Grievers.  However, these things had a weakness and Thomas would soon realize that.

So as Thomas saw how the others were fighting their own wrinkly creature, they were hitting the orange bulbs on their bodies.  Thomas then came to the conclusion that these bulbs were the source of these creatures’ life force.  So he instantly developed the tactic that others were doing, where he would circle the monster and swing his sword at each of the protruding orange bulbs.  As Thomas hit the creature, the creature also hit back with its deadly and bladed fingers, but as he kept hitting the ugly creature, it got much more weaker with each of its bulbs being popped.  When Thomas was killing the creature, the Safe Haven or the Berg (as it was called in the book) landed on the ground and a few people stepped out and stood right in front of it, watching every teenager fighting their creature.  They saw the Berg and moved toward it while they were trying to kill the creatures.  Just as they finished off the last creature, they moved to get onto the Berg as it was escalating.  So you see that this conflict is indeed physical because this fight and a couple other minor ones had to happen in order for the Gladers to make it to the Safe Haven.  Also, as you saw, the Gladers have (once again) won this fight against the creatures, however a few teenagers from the Gladers and Group B were killed (not as many as the battle from the 1st book, but it’s still pretty sad).

Dashner, James. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. New York: Delacorte, 2010. Print.

Totally NOT a Good Ending

Question: Is the ending happy, unhappy, or indeterminate (just ends, leaves you hanging, the conflict is not clearly resolved). Is the ending the appropriate ending for this book?

Nearing the end of the 2nd book in The Maze Runner Series called Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, I really thought the main conflict would have been resolved.  Now to summarize what’s going on in this book, the main conflict is that WICKED (World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department) have once again captured the Gladers, a bunch of male teenagers and a female teenager, and have told them that they must go out into the world they used to know that has now become an entire desert covered with dead trees and destroyed buildings.  There, they must survive the abnormal weather conditions, Cranks (which are people that have been infected by a deadly disease known as the Flare), and other obstacles that await them.  Once they pass the “Scorch Trials”, they must then make it to the Safe Haven, a place which holds the cure to the Flare that the Gladers must acquire in order to cure themselves of the deadly virus that they have been infected with.  When the Gladers reached the Safe Haven, which was actually a gigantic hovercraft waiting for them after they had defeated a bunch of bio-mechanical  humanoids created by WICKED, they got to enjoy fresh clothes, hot food, warm showers, and a place to sleep in.  However, after they fell asleep, Thomas (the main character of this book) woke up in a white room and was told by Teresa (also a main character), telepathically, that he was still on the hovercraft and that she and the others Gladers were put in a dormitory on the ground.  She also told Thomas that she had been at the dormitory for a few days, but after the emotional and painful things Thomas went through, he could no longer trust what she or WICKED says (and that’s where it ends).  So, the conclusion for this book (and just like the previous one) is indeterminate and is an inappropriate one because it (once again) leaves the reader on a “cliffhanger” and thereby tries to give the reader incentive to read the 3rd and final book in The Maze Runner Series. (1)

The conclusion to this book is not an appropriate one because the main conflict in this book (and also like the previous one) has not been resolved.  To restate why this conflict has not been resolved is because we (still) don’t know the real reason how everything that WICKED has done to the Gladers will fit into their plan to save the world.  Sure, I explained before (in a previous blog post that you may or may not have read) that WICKED has done this so that they could study their brainwaves and all that other stuff, but HOW they plan to use this data is unknown.  Now, here is the part of the ending of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials that I had summarized: “Tom?  Tom!  [Thomas] didn’t know how many times [Teresa] said it before he finally responded.  Teresa?  He woke with a jolt and remembered the white room.  Where are you?  They put us in another dormitory after the Berg landed.  We’ve been here a few days, just sitting around doing nothing.  Tom, what happened to you? … They took you away as soon as the Berg landed.  They keep telling us it was too late–that the Flare is too rooted in you.  They say you’ve gotten crazy and violent … Thomas couldn’t respond.  Almost wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard what Teresa had just said.  The fear he’d been holding back began to slowly seep into his chest.  Could he trust her?  She’d lied to him so much already.  And how did he even know this was really her?  It was high time to cut off ties with Teresa. … Thomas couldn’t control it anymore.  Rage pulsed inside of him.  Luckily, he only had to think the words, because he could never have spoken them aloud.  Teresa.  Go away.  Tom–  No.  Don’t say another word.  Just…leave me alone.  And you can tell WICKED that I’m done playing their games.  Tell them I’m done!” (Dashner 356 to 368).   As you can see, it’s not a really good ending to this book as it just doesn’t leave you with the conflict completely resolved, but it doesn’t even leave everything happy or even semi-happy.  Thomas just gets completely emotional with the way things had been going for him; Teresa betraying and lying to him so many times, his other Glader friends dying, and just not getting some REAL answers to the reasons why WICKED is doing this to them and how it will help them.  Now he’s just had enough and no longer wants to see Teresa anymore because he can no longer trust her or WICKED, the organization that’s made them go through very traumatic things.  So this leaves the reader on EVEN MORE of a cliffhanger than the last book did and it therefore tries to give the reader more incentive (than last time) to read the final book in The Maze Runner Series.

To wrap things up here, I’d say that Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials was just as great as the 1st book was; there was a lot of suspension, excitement, conflict, and mysteriousness in it.  However, just like the 1st book I was disappointed that this one left me on yet another cliffhanger and this one was worse than the last.  Everything was fine and dandy until Teresa tells Thomas he’s been separated from the Gladers and is being taken to who-knows-where?  Plus, they never even explained how the Variables and patterns, as that is what the book called this data that WICKED extracted from the tests they ran on the Gladers in the maze, fit into WICKED’s plan to find a cure.  Also, you could tell how I said earlier WICKED promised the Gladers a cure for the Flare that was inside them and yet, the Epilogue tells us that WICKED is still trying to find a cure for the Flare.  So now I bet that some of you are pretty confused, well now you know how I feel.  Although there was a ton of confusion and mystery in this book that frustrates me, it didn’t outweigh the other elements of this book that made it so interesting.  In conclusion, I think that Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials could have had a much better ending that wouldn’t have been so vague and “cliffhanger-y” like the last book.

Dashner, James. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. New York: Delacorte, 2010. Print.

Is This Our Future???

Question: How does the setting in the novel relate to our world? How is it different?

As I came to the end of The Maze Runner, I noticed that the scenes at the end of the book, after the Gladers escaped the maze, were not what I thought they would be.  The world as I knew now in this book had become a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the ground was sand and many of the cities seemed to be critically damaged.  Only when the Gladers were saved did they see this awful world.  They thought it would be like the Glade, lush and green, but in reality it was just too horrible to believe that their world now was so different from the one they were living in before they entered the Glade.  So, the setting in The Maze Runner is different from our world because the world in the book had become a huge series of desolate badlands filled with nothing but dust and horrifying people infected by the Flare.

 

While the setting of The Maze Runner is different from our world now, it is possible that our world could replicate the setting at the end of the book or something closely related to it because of wars and disease.  When I read about this unholy land, I knew the Gladers would eventually have to adjust to the climate and conditions they will probably be living in for the rest of their lives.  As the Gladers were riding in the bus that was being driven by the band of rescuers, they noticed that “the driver drove at reckless speeds, through towns and cities, the heavy rain obscuring most of the view.  Lights and buildings were warped and watery like something out of a drug-induced hallucination,  At one point people outside rushed the bus, their clothes ratty, hair matted to their heads, strange sores like those Thomas had seen on the woman covering their terrified faces.  They pounded on the side of the vehicle as if they wanted to get on, wanted to escape whatever horrible lives they were living.” (Dashner 365).  As you can tell, the driver was going extremely fast, obviously to outrun the people infected with the Flare.  That would make sense considering the book described the bus earlier as old and damaged.  So, it would be possible that the bus would break down and everyone would be in danger if the infected people were banging hard enough on the bus (we interrupt this blog post to bring you an analysis of World War Z).  In addition, they saw that everything was quite blurry and hallucination-like, but since the world was burned, the buildings are all cracked and damaged and ready to fall apart.  However, we don’t know that because the bus was going too fast and it was raining so much that they could not see anything but a huge blur of streetlights and buildings.  Therefore, this all is telling us that the book probably wants to keep us in the dark about what this world actually looks like until we read Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.

 

Even though the world we know is not even remotely like the one in The Maze Runner, ours still has the potential to become something like it.  For example, we have many issues in the world right now such as climate change, the possibility of nuclear warfare, terrorism in war, and new and old diseases arising.  What we saw in The Maze Runner was that the world had been scorched by a solar flare that hit the earth and then a disease had arisen after that called the Flare, which turned people zombie-like.  Even though all the issues in our world are worrisome, they can contribute to the possibility of our world becoming a dystopia like the one in The Maze Runner.

 

Dashner, James. The Maze Runner. New York: Delacorte, 2009. Print.

The Mysteries of The Maze Runner

Question: How do any of the following play a part in the plot of your novel: Chance or coincidence? Mystery? Dilemma (when a character has an important decision and can’t decide what to do)?

When I was reading The Maze Runner, I noticed that there were a lot of mysteries and vague aspects in the beginning.  Some examples are why Thomas and the other Gladers can’t remember anything and why they were all put there.  These mysteries and others made the book quite vague and hard to understand what was going on at first.  These mysteries kept me wanting to read the rest of the book because I wanted to find out the answers to all these mysteries.  So, mystery plays a crucial and critical role in this book because it keeps the reader interested and drives him or her to read the rest of the book and the entire series.

 

So, mystery plays an important role in The Maze Runner because it makes the reader more eager to solve the mysteries of the book by continuing to read it.  When Thomas was pulled out from the box, he was very confused, baffled, and scared.  He didn’t know what to say until he asked, “‘Where am I?’. . . ’Nowhere good.’ This came from the dark-skinned boy.” (Dashner 5-6).  This one question right here was the start of many other questions to come.  When Thomas asked where he was and got an answer from Alby, who he realized was the leader of all those boys, he felt ready to ask many more question, such as how did he get there and who were these people.  However, he felt so emotionally confused that he could not think clearly at first and he didn’t want to get on Alby’s nerves.  This pretty much prevented him from asking the questions he had on his mind.  So even though this question was answered and many others he was about to ask would be, he still did not know what he was up against what with his memory being wiped.

 

When I read The Maze Runner, the mysteries were very intriguing and interesting, especially when the Gladers were trying to find out how to escape the maze.  All these mysteries made me want to read more, even though there were even more mysteries coming up almost all the time when more were solved or were in the process of being solved.  This happened especially during the end when the Gladers had escaped the maze and had realized that their world, as they know it, has changed.   The end of The Maze Runner left quite a great many mysteries unanswered and as a result, disappointed me.  However, the amount of excitement and tension overcomes any disappointment I had from reading the book, which was the author’s purpose I suppose.  This purpose gives me enough reason to want to read the second book and watch the second movie.

 

Dashner, James. The Maze Runner. New York: Delacorte, 2009. Print.