The Maze Runner

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“The Maze”

In this activity, students will construct a maze using symbolism to illustrate Thomas’s journey through the course of the novel.

The Maze is central to Thomas’s life and helps shape the text’s themes of Memory and Identity, Order Versus Chaos, Sacrifice, Growing Up, and Hope. Thomas knew early on he needed to be a Maze Runner. He recovered memories of his role in creating the Maze. Finally, he helped many people escape through the Maze. Build a maze using symbolism to represent Thomas’s character and the key moments, lessons, ideas, and events he experiences.

• Start by sketching out your ideas.

o What will the maze be made of?

o How can the shape of the maze reveal large ideas?

o Which colors will you use, and what will each symbolize?

o How can twists in the maze represent shifts in Thomas, the plot, or ideas?

• Create your maze.
• Prepare to present your maze in a gallery walk.

Explain key aspects of your maze, including how it illustrates at least two of the novel’s themes (Memory and Identity, Order Versus Chaos, Sacrifice, Growing Up, and Hope). View and learn about other mazes your peers create through the gallery walk. Then, reflect in your journal about one way any of these mazes connect to real life.

Teaching Suggestion: Perhaps showing visuals of different mazes/labyrinths would support students at the beginning stages of this activity. Presenting a sketch of a maze and explaining how you would begin applying symbolism about the novel in a think-aloud might also help students access the abstract nature of the assignment. The class could re-read key scenes in the novel that describe the Maze: how large it is, how it moves every night, the ivy, the Grievers, the different sections, etc., and apply these details to the construction of their own symbolic mazes.

Differentiation Suggestion: To support all individual learners in your class, consider allowing them to collaborate to build a Maze as a class—this has the potential to help each student access the novel and its symbolism by interacting with their classmates toward a common goal. Another supportive idea would be to print out a maze and prompt students to use color and drawings to place important ideas about Thomas’s journey where they would best fit.

Paired Text Extension:

Analyzing the symbolism in these mazes might provide some examples of how colors and images can represent ideas.

In this “Amazing Mazes: Cities Become Graphic Puzzles — In Pictures” article, The Guardian features multiple artistic renderings of mazes by the artist Sean C. Jackson.

Teaching Suggestion: Students could choose one of the images and journal about symbolism they see, what moods colors build, and/or what images might represent in that city. This might help toward the beginning of the activity to give students some examples and a solid foundation upon which to begin their mazes.