Character Analysis
We never get to actually see Chancellor Paige; Thomas sees posters of her likeness displayed throughout Denver, but she's not actually a living, breathing character that walks around. Instead, we get to see Chancellor Paige through her letters and memoranda.
At the end of every book, Chancellor Paige writes a memorandum that details WICKED's discoveries and conclusions from each phase of the Trials. From these memoranda, we can base our opinion of Chancellor Paige. Here's what we should chew on:
- She's the leader of WICKED. So that's not exactly good.
- She stops the brain procedure on Thomas. So that's good.
- At the very end of the book, she claims WICKED really was good the whole time and that they really had two options: get the patterns to make a cure or start civilization over with the Gladers who survived.
With this last bit of information, it's fair to say that Chancellor Paige truly has a good heart. Mankind was being destroyed by the Flare, and someone had to do something to save the world. Yes, WICKED's experiments were awful and unethical (to say the least), but the fate of the whole world was at hand. Plus, Chancellor Paige defers to Plan B (giving Thomas and the other immune Gladers a paradise to start a new civilization) when things start to go wrong.
In the end, this woman does sacrifice her own life for the good of mankind. But you'll have to make your own individual decision about whether she's good or bad, or something in between.