Susan

Lore & Background

In the concrete-and-steel world of the Maze, size and age are survival liabilities. Susan, the youngest of the Gladers, is built small and young-looking, a fact that makes him an easy target for the Grievers and a constant worry for the older boys. He does not have Alby's towering frame or Newt's quick tongue; what he has is a watchful, inward stillness that lets him absorb the terror of the shifting walls without always voicing it. The other Gladers learn to read his silence as its own kind of information.

When the Maze's secret is torn open and the group is thrust into the Scorch—a blistering, irradiated wasteland—Susan's smallness becomes a different kind of problem. Heat, dehydration, and the Scorchers' violence do not care about a boy's age. Yet he endures, moving through the cracked earth and ruined cities alongside the others, his quiet observation proving as vital as any one of their louder instincts.

By the time the group reaches WCKD and learns the terrible truth behind their memory-wiping, Susan is no longer just the kid at the back of the line. He is a witness to the full machinery of the experiment, and his survival into the final act of the trilogy marks him as one of the few who carries the complete, unbroken memory of what was done to them.

In Their Own Story

The Scorch wind tasted like copper and ash. Susan pressed his back against the rusted hull of a collapsed bus, knees drawn to his chest, and watched the horizon shimmer with heat-haze. Newt was three yards away, barking orders at a Scorch gang that had circled back. Alby was somewhere to the left, his shadow a long smear on the cracked asphalt. Susan didn't move. He never moved first. He counted the seconds between the wind gusts, the way the dust swirled in lazy spirals off the dead road, the faint tick of cooling metal above him. When Newt finally turned and saw him still crouched there, eyes wide and dry, the older boy just grunted, spat, and kept running. Susan exhaled. The bus groaned. The sky stayed the color of a bruise. He was still here. That was enough for today.

Reader's Guide

Susan is a Glader—one of the memory-wiped teenage boys locked inside the Maze. He is the youngest and smallest of the group, a fact that shapes how the others treat him: protective, sometimes condescending, always aware of his fragility. He is not a leader or a fighter; his role is that of the quiet observer, the one who watches, waits, and endures.

He appears in all three books (and films): the Maze, the Scorch, and WCKD. In the first installment he is part of the core group that learns the Maze's rules. In the second he endures the Scorch's punishing landscape alongside the others. In the third he is among the survivors who confront WCKD's true agenda and the fate of the infected.

His memory state follows the group's: wiped at the start, partially restored as the story progresses, and fully intact by the final book. His defining trait is his smallness—both physical and emotional. Where Newt is loyal bluster and Alby is sheer mass, Susan is the kid who stays still while the world burns around him, and whose quiet survival says as much as any shout.

Did You Know?

• Susan is consistently identified as the youngest and smallest of the Gladers, a distinction that shapes the group's dynamic from the first page.
• He is one of the few Gladers who appears across the full three-book arc, surviving the Maze, the Scorch, and the WCKD revelation.
• His quiet, watchful temperament contrasts sharply with the louder personalities of Newt, Alby, and Minho, making him a grounding presence in tense scenes.
• In the film adaptations, his small stature and young appearance make him visually the most vulnerable figure in the group, reinforcing his role as the 'kid' the others protect.