Dashner, James

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Dashner

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James

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Subject: extinction ×

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    PublicationOpen Access
    The Death Cure
    2011 - Dashner, James
    The novel follows the narrative of the second book in The Maze Runner series. The first book introduces Thomas, a sixteen-year-old boy who wakes up in a mysterious labyrinth, in whose enclosed central area – called The Glade – live other boys (the Gladers) who were sent there in unknown circumstances. After exploring the maze and managing to find an exit, it is revealed that the world had been ravaged by a coronal mass ejection and that an organisation called WICKED, comprising a number of scientists, sought to reunite people with a natural resistance to a disease called “the Flare” in the maze, using the boys as test subjects to observe their capacity of working together. The ending of the first novel sees Thomas and the Gladers confronting WICKED’S scientists and being rescued and taken to another place. The Scorch Trials, the second book, introduces the “Rat Man”, a WICKED scientist who explains the boys that the organisation had been studying them in the hope of finding a cure for the Flare, and that they are infected with the disease as well, albeit being more resistant to it. In order for them to find a cure, the Gladers are asked to travel to the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the planet. After meeting several characters and choosing not to trust WICKED, Thomas is caught by the organisation but later manages to escape and kill the “Rat Man”. The epilogue of the novel reveals that the Flare was purposely created by the government so as to control the population, but it spread uncontrollably. The series explores themes such as environmental catastrophe, scientific experiments and innovations, and the use of science both in a nefarious way, with the potential of causing a mass extinction, and as a way of preventing it.