Analysis Of James Dashner's Maze Runner And The Allegory Of The Cave

Plato has a deep understanding of human nature and perception. He uses his literary work the “Allegory of the Cave” to support his theory of forms. He argues that the material world, the world where we use our senses, is an unreliable way to view the world. Relying on your physical senses alone makes you blind. You are not allowing yourself to see the entire world if you only use your senses. The only way to see the true world is through abstract or philosophical thought he called ideas. Ideas represent the world more accurately than physical objects alone. Ideas are timeless and pure whereas physical objects are time-bound and have a limited existence (Richter 25). For example, every physical object on Earth such as a car is time-bound because at some point, it will break and rust until it finally vanishes from existence. However, he idea of …show more content…
Plato presents his philosophical ideas with cave men imprisoned and ignorant to the world and truth. Dashner presents the same thing as the teenagers have a difficult time choosing the correct path in order to beat the maze and achieve the absolute truth and knowledge. In the novel, a young man wakes up in an elevator with no recollection of his past, only his name which is Thomas. The same thing happened with the other teenagers living in the Glade, the center area of the Maze that has four walls that encases it and separated from the Maze. When they finally escape the Maze, they realize that their world was artificially constructed by a group of agents and scientists who were putting these teenagers through a trial (Dashner). These creators of the maze were using the teens as an experiment by trying to figure out what is was that gave the immunity from a brain disease called the Flare which killed half the world’s population and gain the knowledge of a