The Maze Runner Is Not Existential

I wanted to read a novel with action that somehow had a message about life or at least tried to describe it. To some extent I got a little of both with The Maze Runner.

Life can be like a maze, but this was largely not explored in Dashner’s The Maze Runner.

James Dashner struggled with #MeToo type allegations and has since been dropped by his publisher [1] [2], but there’s been a few movies made about his books and the idea of running through a maze seemed like a parallel of life to me.

Running through a maze can describe life in many ways, and the story does make some tie ins. The main character, Thomas, doesn’t know much about before he was flung into it. Reminded me to some extent of Kierkegaard’s depiction of how ideas are the jetsam and floatsam we wash up with and use to our own ends.

In the same way the boys in the mini village where he grows up appropriate the things they find (and the things they are sent by ‘the creators’) to their own purposes.

The story depicts the teens (young adults) as having differing levels of honesty about how much time they have their. As the conditions to survive are intentionally pulled out toward the end, some continue trying to go on like life will just continue the way it always had. But it doesn’t. This parallels to me the way a lot of people live like they will never die and will never have to look back on what did or did not make their pursuits.

Other existential aspects of the book:

• The main character intentionally gets attacked by a monster for a hidden purpose knowing he will be misunderstood.
• A lot of wrestling about whether to give up.
• Dealing with the chance that the Maze might not have any solution.
• Looking at life as a test.
• The characters (especially Thomas) deal with guilt as a subjective truth.
• How decisions can be made without knowing the outcome or underlying details.
• When Thomas looks at leaving the Maze against the rules to rescue someone, it’s a conflict of the letter of the law versus the spirit of it.
• The mistake of trying to understand someone else’s purpose while overlooking your own.

But at the end of the day, I think there were too many flaws to really call this an existential book. And I’m not talking about Dashner using small words to lure the widest possible audience or making the girl character more of a toughie than the boys or killing off the nice kid (basically the equivalent of Barb from Stranger Things).

Here are some of the problems:

• The story is hugely plot driven. The characters have some consistency, but they are little more than details to get to a final result at the end of the story.
• The characters often emphasize (and dramaticize) that they have no choice in many situations.
• The “solution” for the maze is complex, whereas in this world love is a very simple thing that anyone can choose at any point in their life.
• There’s a lot of emphasize on the future. Will they get out or not? There isn’t much of any room for looking at finding meaning at the moment in light of the absurd.
• Getting out of the Maze and getting home are looked at as a life fulfilling mission. A lot of people live in comfortable homes while being full of despair.
• The drama is kranked up to eleven. People call this thing crazy, and the next thing gets called insane. And then this other thing over here is insane. There’s a lot of edge lord, shock jock content in this book that you rarely find in life. And even in life, a person succeeds by reflecting on it and not as an end in itself.
• Looking to all the maps combined as the solution. Chasing the herd is not going to tell you the meaning of your life.
• Two characters can read each other’s thoughts in an unexplained way. I found this fun, but it is a diversion from a place where (as Solomon writes “The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy” Proverbs 14:10 ESV).
• Instead of reviewing my own feelings about what is going on in the book, I read about them after everything that happens. It feels spoon fed.

The Maze Runner reminded me of what little I’ve heard of ABC’s Lost. It had a lot of interesting things and managed to hold my interest in ways a lot of books don’t, but never said much about the human condition or life and what it means to live it.