Dear Mr. Jockers,
My 7th Letter Essay is about my 2nd Dystopian Novel, the Maze Runner which contain 375 pages and was written by James Dashner. James Dashner was born on November 26, 1972 in the town of Austell, Georgia. He graduated from Duluth High School and Brigham Young University and is currently living in Utah with wife and 4 children. The Maze Runner is his most widely-distributed book reached 100 weeks standing on the New York Times Bestseller list for Children’s Series on September 21st of 2014.
The Maze Runner starts of with Tom, a boy who wakes up in an elevator and has mysteriously forgotten everything except his first name. When the elevator opens, hr sees that he is greeted by a bunch of other boys in a small area surrounded by a big, deadly maze known as “the Glade”. They all struggle to escape the Maze, but they just can’t find the exit nor can they figure out who put them there and why. Can Tom save them?
I was surprised when it was revealed that was started it all was a solarflare based apocalypse and the protagonists can’t go back to their old lives. I liked the James Dashner made us all think Tom’s journey was through, but it turns out he only completed stage one. I was interested in this passage, “Are they because they want to go back to to their old life, or is it because they’re so depressed at realizing their old life was no better than what we have now?” -Tom (pg. 149). Tom asks this question after learning about “the Changing”, forcing the other protagonists such as Alby and the others to consider what they witnessed in those who have gone through it. “The Changing” seems to make its victims unpleasant company afterwards. Those people become shunned by the greater Glader community. When Tom hears that “the Changing” causes old memories to be recovered, revealing the state of the outside world, there fore he begins to wonder if this caused their depression. If one spent their waking life dreaming of a better home , they would be crushed to find out it no longer exists. Overall I’d give it 9 out of 10.
Sincerely,
Raymond Joseph Martin III.
