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• 1 media/6a00d8341c795b53ef01156f6f78eb970c.jpg 2022-10-20T08:51:55-07:00 Nature being Violent and Beyond Control 20 image_header 2022-10-25T13:46:25-07:00

  "While these texts, like others..., view the natural world as hostile and threatening, they also make clear the culpability of human civilization in provoking that hostility"  (Harrison, 2019, p. 105).

  As Jennifer Harrison notes in the above quote in Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction: Negotiating the Nature/Culture Divide, a hallmark of "climate change fiction" or "cli-fi", is portraying nature as violent (2019, p. 104). This uncontrollable violence also defines the eco-horror genre, which encompasses most cli-fi works as well. In nearly all pieces eco-horror media, humanity has wronged nature in some way, ranging in scale from one person to the entire world, and nature takes revenge. Some entries, such as 1975's Jaws, only portray the "violent and uncontrollable" aspect, as there is no reason given as to why the shark is terrorizing the particular town in the movie (Spielberg, 1975). However, other media such as 1977's Day of the Animals emphasizes that humans are to blame for nature's actions.
  
  This theme is seen within The Maze Runner series as early as the first book. The Gladers live in fear of odd amalgams of machinery and organic matter known as Grievers that hunt down and "sting" any human they find in the Maze or the Glade (where the Gladers live). Those who are stung have may survive if they are administered "grief serum" in time, but they must undergo a painful process known as "the Changing" where they regain some of the memories that WICKED took from them before sending them to the Maze. This process places the Grievers as the violent representation of nature and implies that nature can have irreversible effects on humanity despite any efforts that humans make. Overall, this serves as a harsh reminder to anyone who engages with the series that nature still has power over humanity.
  
  
  
  
  The Flare is an excellent example of the other aspect of cli-fi that Harrison mentions: humans provoking nature (2019). Humans originally developed the Flare as a bio-weapon, but tried to harness it to kill off part of the global population to conserve resources after the solar flares scorched Earth. In trying to harness nature, they ultimately provoked it, which led to consequences that are major plot elements within the series. Once humanity realized their mistake with the Flare, WICKED was created as a scrambling attempt to find a cure, but even by the end of the series had not found a cure. This not only reinforces nature as a violent, uncontrollable entity, but also as something that will react when humans attempt to take advantage of it. This message is important to send to a society that often thinks of itself as above nature since it warns that nature is powerful and can retaliate.
  
  
  
  Plot information retrieved from The Maze Runner Wiki | Fandom, n.d..