Where It All Goes Down
The Glade, in a post-apocalyptic future
Despite All Our Rage, We're Still Just Rats in a Cage
The Glade is a meadow the size of several football fields surrounded by gigantic walls that fall in the middle of a vast maze formed by walls of ivy. Ever do one of those little toys that are made out of cheap plastic and have a small metallic ball that you need to navigate through the maze by tilting it one way or another? Picture one of those, but make it the size of New York City. The Glade would be the blank part in the center.
Even though the boys who have been dumped into the Glade resent being there because of the mystery surrounding them (oh yeah, and the things that are trying to kill them out in the Maze), it is still a sort of idyllic existence:
The air felt perfect, and it made him wonder again about the weather of the place. Never rained, never snowed, never got too hot or too cold. If it weren't for the little fact that they were torn apart from friends and families and trapped in a Maze with a bunch of monsters, it could be paradise. (31.33)
So the weather is always perfect, the food is delicious, and the boys spend their time like colonial re-enactment people: farming, raising livestock, pooping in the woods. (Okay, maybe not that last part.) Other than the claustrophobic atmosphere and the killer mucus monsters, life in the Glade ain't too shabby.
Hey, We Solved the Maze, Now Where's Our Prize?
The Glade was built by a group of scientists from WICKED as a sort of evaluation for some of the best and brightest orphans they could pick from the millions that were left as a result of the Flare, a devastating epidemic that spread unchecked throughout the world. So even though the boys spend all of their energy trying to escape from it, the Glade is heaven compared to the real world. When they finally do escape, it is to a plague-ridden, fire-ravaged wasteland. What a rip-off.