Consciousness explored in The Maze Runner trilogy

The paper discusses the young-adult post apocalyptic saga The Maze Runner Series (2009-2011) by James Dashner. This dystopian trilogy investigates the themes of self-consciousness, self-cognition and self-creation, showing how mental experiments can take the human mind to its extremes. At the beginning of the saga a group of teenagers has to survive inside an unsolvable maze. After two years Thomas's unexpected arrival starts a sort of countdown which forces them either to find a way out or die. Yet the only thing that Thomas remembers is his own name. The first volume mainly deals with his attempts to retrieve his lost memories and understand who he really is and what he is meant to do. Only once they are out of the maze (volumes 2 and 3), they realize that they have just passed a phase of a scientific experiment run by WICKED (World in Catastrophe: Killerzone Experiment Department), whose aim is selecting the best candidates to cure the Flare, a disease which is threatening humanity. All of them have a controlling device in their brain which is used to control them and study their psychic experience. Actually these teenagers have to face a number of difficulties and deathly tasks: their reactions and decisions will enable the scientists to determine which brains can fight off the Flare. Dashner concentrates on the characters' different reactions towards the multiple stimuli and explores the development of their consciousness in a 'Truman Show' universe, in which they often fail to distinguish what is real from what it is not. They can't rely on anything except their instincts.