This is a quick summary and analysis of The Scorch Trials by James Dashner.
This is a story about a boy named Thomas who escaped with several others from a large maze.
He and his fellow Gladers are brought to a facility by WICKED, a global organization
trying to save the world, but then Teresa, a girl from the Glade, is taken away and replaced
with Aris, a boy who claims that he too escaped a similar maze with a group of girls, Group
B.
The boys realize that they are surrounded by infected humans, known as Cranks, who have
been sick due to the release of a deadly disease called the Flare.
The group is told by a man named Janson that they also have the Flare disease and are instructed
to travel to a safe haven where they will be given a cure.
The group leaves the facility and encounters a harsh and hot environment.
They meet Jorge and Brenda, Cranks who are in the early stages of the disease, and they
travel together to the cure.
Brenda and Thomas are separated from the group and travel through the Underneath, a dark
series of underground buildings that are inhabited by Cranks.
Throughout the city, they notice signs that claim that Thomas is the real leader.
Thomas and Brenda are then captured by a group of Cranks, but are rescued by the Gladers.
However, Thomas gets shot.
The Berg, a large ship, arrives and Thomas is taken away.
He is healed by WICKED and returned to the group.
The Gladers continue on their journey and Thomas receives a telepathic message from
Teresa that warns him that something bad is going to happen to him and that he needs to
trust her.
The next day, the Gladers encounter Teresa and the girls of Group B. They are hostile
and take Thomas away in a burlap bag, claiming that they will kill him.
Thomas manages to talk the girls out of killing him and they share their experiences in the
maze.
As the girls continue towards the safe haven, Teresa pulls Thomas aside and tells him that
she's been working with Aris to get him to a secret door.
She knocks him out and pushes him through the door.
Thomas awakes and Teresa tells him that she and Aris had to pretend to betray him so that
WICKED wouldn't kill him.
Thomas is reluctant to trust her, but the three of them meet up with the others toward
the safe haven.
They all arrive at the safe haven, but are then attacked by monsters with light bulbs
on their bodies.
Some of the boys and girls die in the battle, but the Berg arrives and most of them escape
on it.
Jorge and Brenda are allowed to stay with them and the group is promised by David, a
man who works for WICKED, that there will be no more trials and that they will be given
the cure for the Flare.
In the end, Thomas wakes up in a white room all alone and can now talk to Brenda through
telepathic powers.
As always a lot can be said about this story, but what draws my interest and attention is
the idea of free will and exactly how free we are.
This idea is first brought up when comparing the survivors of Group A and Group B. Both
groups made similar, if not the same, choices to escape the original maze.
The number of variables that had to go correct are so improbable, yet WICKED had correctly
predicted how each group would act.
This discussion of free will is further tested when comparing this story with the first novel
in this series, The Maze Runner.
In the first story, Thomas and the Gladers must travel in a structured maze, which, by
design, is limited and meant to control the movement of the participant.
But in this story, the characters must travel in a wide open world, not a structured one,
yet their behavior almost seems more controlled in the open world than in the controlling
walls of the maze.
The journey to the safe haven seems so calculated, as if all of their choices that were supposedly
made under free will have been predicted and expected.
Likewise, we may think that we're thinking independently from others, but in fact, a
lot of our choices are not as free as we'd like to think.
With algorithms and emerging technologies, others are now able to predict our likes and
dislikes, as is evident with things like Pandora, Youtube, and Amazon.
So how how free are our choices when so much data and patterns can be collected about us
and our behaviors?