The person01–03
01·Who they are
Who is Zart?
Zart is a Track-hoe — one of the Gladers assigned to the Gardens, the cultivated agricultural section of the Glade that produces the community's food supply. In a society built entirely on specialisation and cooperative labour, his role is foundational: without the Track-hoes tending crops, the Glade starves regardless of how brilliant its Runners are or how firm its leadership holds. Dashner never gives Zart extended dialogue or a dedicated chapter, yet he is named and visible in group scenes, which is significant. The novel populates the Glade with enough recognisable minor figures to create a sense of a genuine society rather than a stage set, and Zart is one of those load-bearing background characters. His calm, diligent presence signals that the Glade functions because dozens of boys do unglamorous work every single day — a point the narrative rewards the attentive reader for noticing.
02·Arc & motivation
What is Zart's arc and motivation?
Zart has no personal arc in the conventional sense; he does not seek answers about his past, challenge authority, or push for escape. His motivation, as far as the text allows us to infer, is the same collective motivation that holds the Glade together before Thomas's arrival: keep things running, maintain routine, and survive another day. He represents the conservative, order-sustaining instinct that pervades much of the established Glader community. Where Minho is driven by exploration and Gally by rigid rule-enforcement, Zart embodies something quieter — continuity through labour. His trajectory is not a character arc so much as a slow erasure: when the Grievers begin their nightly culls after the Maze walls stop closing, Zart is among those taken, and his death marks the point at which the Glade's careful domestic order begins its irreversible collapse.
03·Key moments
What are Zart's key moments?
Zart's most consequential appearance is less a single scene than a cumulative presence in the Gardens sequences, where Thomas observes the Glade's division of labour in the novel's early chapters. These scenes establish the Glade as a functioning micro-society, and Zart helps anchor that impression. His death during the Griever culling period is the key narrative moment assigned to him. Dashner uses the nightly removals to systematically dismantle everything the Gladers built — leadership, routine, morale — and Zart's death participates in that demolition. Because readers have seen him quietly doing his work, his loss registers as the loss of something ordinary and therefore precious. It is precisely his lack of heroics that makes his fate affecting.
The cast04–05
04·Relationships
What are Zart's most important relationships?
Thomas and Zart exist in an observer-observed dynamic during Thomas's early days as a Greenie. Thomas catalogues the Glade's structure, and Zart is part of what he catalogues — a reminder that the world Thomas is disrupting with his push toward escape is not merely an obstacle but a community people have built and depend on.
Newt and Zart share the relationship of administrator and worker. Newt's authority includes job assignments, and the Track-hoes fall under his organisational remit. Zart's orderly compliance with that structure is part of what Newt is trying to protect when he resists chaos.
Frypan and Zart form a quiet, complementary partnership that the novel never explicitly celebrates but structurally implies: Zart grows the food, Frypan cooks it. Together they represent the domestic infrastructure that keeps every other Glader — Runner, Builder, Slopper — alive and capable of doing their own work.
Gally and Zart share a philosophical alignment without sharing a voice. Both represent the preservation-of-order faction, but where Gally turns that instinct into confrontational ideology, Zart enacts it through silent, steady work. The contrast illustrates how the same underlying value can produce radically different characters.
Chuck and Zart are parallel figures in their narrative function: neither commands the plot, yet both humanise the Glade's population. Their deaths collectively raise the emotional stakes of the story's final act.
05·Connected characters
How is Zart connected to the other characters?
Study06–07
06·Questions
Questions readers ask about Zart
What is Zart's job in the Glade?
Zart is a Track-hoe, one of the Gladers assigned to tend the Gardens — the agricultural section of the Glade that grows the community's food supply. Without his work and that of his fellow Track-hoes, every other Glader, from Runners to Builders, would go hungry regardless of their own contributions. His role is foundational to the Glade's survival, even though it rarely earns him the spotlight.
How does Zart die in The Maze Runner?
Zart is killed during the Griever nightly culls, the period after the Maze walls stop closing when Grievers begin taking one Glader at a time. His death is not dramatized in its own dedicated scene; instead, it forms part of Dashner's systematic dismantling of Glade order. Because readers have seen Zart quietly doing essential work, his loss registers as the destruction of something ordinary and therefore precious.
What is Zart's relationship with Frypan?
Zart and Frypan form a quiet, complementary partnership at the heart of the Glade's domestic survival: Zart grows the food in the Gardens, and Frypan cooks it. The novel never explicitly celebrates this pairing, but it is structurally central — together they represent the domestic infrastructure that keeps every other Glader capable of doing their own work, whether exploring the Maze or enforcing its rules.
Does Zart have any famous or memorable quotes in the novel?
No attributed quotes from Zart are recorded in the text. Dashner gives him no extended dialogue, which is itself significant — Zart's characterization is built entirely through presence and function rather than voice. His silence reinforces the novel's point that essential labor often goes unacknowledged, and it makes the loss of his contribution during the Griever culls quietly affecting rather than dramatically announced.
Why does Zart side with order and routine rather than pushing for escape?
Zart's motivation, as far as the text allows us to infer, is the collective drive to keep things running that defined Glade life before Thomas's arrival. He embodies the community's conservative, order-sustaining instinct — the belief that survival depends on routine and cooperation rather than risk. This aligns him philosophically with Gally, though where Gally turns that instinct into confrontational ideology, Zart expresses it through silent, steady agricultural work.
How is Zart's relationship with Gally different from his relationship with Newt?
Zart and Gally share a philosophical alignment — both prioritize preserving Glade order over gambling on escape — but Gally voices that stance aggressively while Zart enacts it through quiet labor. With Newt, the relationship is structural: as second-in-command responsible for job assignments, Newt holds organizational authority over the Track-hoes, and Zart's orderly compliance is part of the hierarchy Newt works hard to protect.
Why does Zart's death matter if he is a minor character?
Zart's death matters because his ordinariness is the point. Dashner names and lightly sketches background Gladers like Zart precisely so their deaths carry genuine emotional weight during the Griever culling period. Losing a quiet, diligent worker who kept the Glade fed signals the collapse of the community's everyday life, not just its heroic ventures — raising dread without requiring readers to have deeply invested in a single secondary figure.
07·Essay angles
Use this in your essay
Tool · Essay angles
The Glade as utopian microcosm: Examine how Zart's role contributes to the Glade's initial presentation as a functional, even admirable, small society