Maze Runner Quiz

The Maze Runner is a young adult dystopian novel series by James Dashner, beginning with The Maze Runner (2009) and continuing through The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure, and prequels. The series follows Thomas, a boy who arrives with no memory in the Glade - A community of boys trapped inside a massive maze - And must discover both the maze's secrets and the truth about the organization that put them there, known as WICKED (World in Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department).

The Glade, the Maze, and WICKED

The Gladers are teenagers whose memories have been wiped by WICKED, left to survive and solve the maze as part of an experiment to find a "cure" for the Flare, a brain disease that has devastated humanity. Runners - The most skilled and brave Gladers - Venture into the maze daily to map it and find a pattern. Grievers are the maze's mechanical-organic monsters that patrol at night and can kill or "sting" Gladers, triggering partial memory recovery ("the Changing"). Dystopian young adult fiction like The Maze Runner and The Hunger Games shares the device of young people controlled by oppressive adult authority systems.

The series was adapted into three films (2014 - 2018) starring Dylan O'Brien as Thomas, Kaya Scodelario as Teresa, and Aml Ameen and Ki Hong Lee as Alby and Minho. The worldbuilding includes a post-apocalyptic solar flare-scorched Earth and a global zombie-like disease called the Flare. Thomas's relationship with Teresa, who was sent to the Glade shortly before he arrived and is the only girl ever brought there, is central to the mystery of the series. Young adult fiction with ensemble casts and complex mysteries consistently generates passionate reader communities.