Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Maze Runner, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and Identity
Stability and Order vs. Change and Chaos
Sacrifice
Growing Up
Hope
Sexism
Summary
Analysis
In the sleeping quarters, Thomas rests on the bottom bed of a bunk bed. Minho is on the top bed and Newt has the bed next to theirs. Minho asks what he thinks happened to the Gladers who stayed behind and Thomas says that they probably didn’t make it. Although the other Newt and Minho keeping talking, exhaustion overcomes Thomas.
If Thomas is right, then the fact that all the Gladers are dead illustrates the absolute necessity of hope and change. The boys who stayed lost their lives because they were too afraid and reliant on the rules of the Glade to risk their lives trying a new approach for escape.
Themes
Before falling to sleep, Thomas talks to Teresa in his head. She tells him she’s sorry about Chuck. He begins to explain the promise he made to him, but she cuts him off, saying that Chuck chose to sacrifice himself. She tells him that instead of pitying himself, he should accept that now he a responsibility not to waste Chuck’s sacrifice. After agreeing with her, Thomas says that he wishes he could remember her and their life before the Maze. She says she feels the same way. They say goodnight and Thomas rolls over, feeling a slight sense of happiness before falling asleep.
Chuck’s sacrifice becomes a model for the right kind of sacrifice. As Teresa suggests, sacrifice is noble and praiseworthy as long as it is made of one’s own free will. The Gladers who died in the fight against the Grievers made the same ethical choice, risking their own lives in order to escape the Glade. In contrast, WICKED unjustly risks the lives of the Gladers by putting them through the Maze Trial without their consent.
Themes
