Totalitarianism In The Maze Runner

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Throughout the first movie of The Maze Runner series, which was released in September 2014, a group of scientists create a sickness known as the flare to reduce the population rate. Eventually they come to a realization that the flare is much worse than expected. The scientific experiments include a government group known as the World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department, or WCKD. This group introduces certain totalitarian ways within their methods. The Maze Runner series demonstrates the idea of totalitarianism throughout the everyday lives of these individuals by representing WCKD as a group that controls, restricts individuals’ rights, the understanding that such procedures being followed were just and vital for the greater good. Totalitarianism is a political and social concept that explains a form of government where the state has all control over the civilians. Such government assumes full power, without any limitations. As put by Juan Linz, a totalitarian scholar, the three main factors of a totalitarianism government are “a monistic center of power; an ideology developed, justified and pursued by the leadership; and mass participation in political and social goals encouraged and even demanded by that same leadership” (Silberstein 42). Throughout the 20th century the manifestation of totalitarianism was an extreme measure of harsh political occurrences. Historians have gained the ability to recognize certain differences between specific governments from