The Maze Runner

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Have you ever completed a maze on paper? Have you ever walked through a maze? If not, can you imagine what it would be like? How can mazes affect people?

Teaching Suggestion: If possible, asking students to complete a maze on paper could be a powerful visual introduction to keep in mind as they read. The videos below offer images from mazes people can walk through, which can help students visualize the Maze Thomas encounters. You might have a discussion putting the maze in Spain in perspective; it takes about an hour to get to the center of that maze, but Thomas runs for hours before getting through one section of the Maze in the novel.

• “Amazing Maze: What Science Says About Solving Labyrinths” by National Geographic includes an article interviewing a neuroscientist and a 3-minute video about mazes, ways to solve them, and ways they appear in our everyday lives.
• This BBC article provides a 1-minute video and details about Spain’s largest garden maze.

2. What is the appeal of literature about the future? How is writing about a futuristic society different from writing a historical novel?

Teaching Suggestion: Perhaps discussing other futuristic books or movies students have seen can be an effective entry point to this topic. Students might list the characteristics of these texts they have observed. The NPR article could offer a chance to agree or disagree with ideas. One way to incorporate the Teen Vogue article might be to read the definitions of post-apocalyptic it offers, then ask students to journal about whether our world fits that definition before continuing to read what some of the authors say.

• This article from Teen Vogue, published during the pandemic, offers helpful definitions and thoughts from authors of dystopian fiction about the world and how it compares to those they created.
• “For Teens, Dystopian Fiction Seems Pretty Real — And That's Why They Like It” from NPR includes an article and a 4-minute audio option about some adolescent reactions to dystopian fiction.

Short Activity

In small groups, discuss “The Trolley Problem.” Compare and contrast your immediate intuitive response with that of other group members. What reasons do you have for responding as you did? Individually, draft a persuasive writing piece supporting your choice. Include counterarguments and an examination of each argument's implications. Have a peer review your persuasive writing piece, providing feedback on your writing and your logic. Edit accordingly. Then, share your persuasive writing piece with the class. Discuss similarities and differences across your classmates' writings and why they might be so different or so similar.

Teaching Suggestion: Throughout the novel, people make choices to benefit the greater good. Reflecting on this philosophical dilemma can help better illuminate character motivations in the novel. Viewing the video together first then asking students to discuss in small groups can provide a chance for all voices to be heard. In the groups, students could also have access to the Brandeis text, which may lead to increased complexity of student thinking as they will have more questions to ponder. Reflecting further individually in their journals could provide students a chance to deepen their understanding, solidify some take-aways, and express some lingering wonderings. It might be interesting to return to these journals at different places in the novel to see how their contents may apply to decisions characters make.

• “The Trolley Problem” overview explained by Brandeis University poses several questions about sacrifice and individual versus the common good.
• BBC Radio’s “The Trolley Problem” explains this famous philosophical problem through a short video.

Differentiation Suggestion: Consider providing students with executive function differences, English language learners, and/or students who learn best visually the framework of a graphic organizer that allows them to fill in the pros and cons of each Trolley Problem choice/outcome and then make and justify their decisions accordingly. These students may also benefit from sentence and/or paragraph frames to help them structure their writing after thinking through the decision sequentially. You may also consider pairing students together to have a thought partner as well as offering students who struggle with writing the opportunity to outline their arguments and present them orally and/or only produce an introductory paragraph, conclusion, and/or simply the outline itself (with perhaps the thesis and topic sentences fleshed out).

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

What are some of your most important memories? In what ways do think important memories impact a person as they grow?

Teaching Suggestion: Thomas and the others arrive in the Glade with no (or almost no) memories. Journaling about important memories asks students to reflect on the importance of their own memories, bringing in a personal connection. Before reading the articles, it could be interesting to discuss how important students believe memories are to identity. The Scientific American article presents an argument that memories do not make us who we are, which could be a text to return to during the beginning of the novel as Thomas struggles with adjusting to not remembering. NPR’s article about Jill Price might provide a contrast to the characters’ losing their memories. Students could discuss which they believe would be more challenging to face.

• With their “Morals, Not Memories, Define Who We Are” article, Scientific American explores a study about identity.
• “Blessed and Cursed by an Extraordinary Memory” from NPR examines Jill Price’s experiences with remembering everything for decades.

Differentiation Suggestion: For auditory learners, English language learners, and students who could benefit from listening while reading along, the NPR article also includes an option to listen to the interview. Though it is almost 30 minutes long, listening to the first 5 minutes provides an overview of Jill Price’s condition students can use to imagine what it would be like to remember every detail constantly. Also, the first two paragraphs of the Scientific American article could be excerpted to limit the scope of the reading while still providing students with the essential information from it.