Censorship Activity Surrounding the Maze Runner (Essay Sample)

The Maze Runner Censorship
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The Maze Runner Censorship
The book on which this research paper focuses is known as The Maze Runner (book 1), authored by James Dashner. It is the first installment in a trilogy of books that go by the same name. This dystopian science fiction novel has elicited significant attention from many quarters of society since 2009. In the book, Dashner narrates a story set in the distant future, where calamity has befallen the earth, necessitating dangerous experiments that involve coerced teenagers. The subjects (Gladers) are held in a prison-like facility (Glade), where they have to surmount a series of challenges meant to evaluate their collective problem-solving capacity and the individual strengths of each member (Dashner, 2009). Eventually, the subjects escape the Glade with the protagonist’s (Thomas) help. Unfortunately, unknown to them is the fact they have merely completed the initial stage of an experiment. This book has elicited intense attention, with many arguing in favor of its ability to stretch a reader’s imagination. However, on the flip side, The Maze Runner is openly dehumanizing, excessively violent, and significantly depressing, warranting a ban.
The attention attracted by The Maze Runner was both positive and negative. For instance, in 2014, the book was adapted into a film by the same. However, the book (and accompanying film) has been a target of censorship (Alkhafaji & Yaroub, 2019). Challenges have been mounted against it, with calls for a ban on the book littering the Internet (Tomiak, 2013). Since this write-up focuses on these concepts in relation to the book in question, it is crucial to understand them. According to Fitzsimmons (1996, p.1), censorship entails “not only the deletion or excision of parts of published materials, but also