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In the movie, near the beginning they say the ladder can't be used to get to the top of the wall. Moments before I saw a tall structure being made of wood, so why can't they see the maze from a high vantage point? And why can't the get to the top of the wall using ladders or a tower built adjacent to it?

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My argument is two-fold:

  1. Climbing on top of the wall would not really help you that much. It would be quite an effort to build such a ladder/scaffold. Then you sit atop some piece of wall, and need to start building bridges to reach the next pieces of wall which lie a little further outward from the center. Building bridges over 5-10 meter gaps is not easy, so the progress of this venture would be very slow.

  2. Why would they even want to do it?

They mapped the entire maze, remember? They even know about the moving parts, and when which constellations of paths appear or disappear. So their problem is really that they have not been able to get to the outermost sections because of doors shutting it off - climbing walls would not help you with that. The runners are just pretending to scout the maze day after day to keep up hope and morale.

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    I have not downvoted and I haven't seen the actual film or read the book, but why does this make sense? Being able to see yourself and a maze is far superior to trying to use a map. Mazes which prevent escape need to have very long sections blocking movement which lead to the outer walls, or they won't block ground movement, so the tops tend to be walking routes to the outside. Assuming a ladder can be pulled up, it would probably be able to be lowered on the far side, allowing unblocked movement directly outwards in any direction with ladder-scalable walls. Why not in this case?
    – Dronz
    Commented Sep 12, 2015 at 17:24
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    As they had already mapped it out, and decided there was no exit, what would they lose by trying to build something to go over the outer walls?
    – Rogue Jedi
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 0:48
  • You wouldn't build lots of bridges just one portable one. Then you would use that to traverse just as they do with glaciers.
    – Nicolas
    Commented Mar 27, 2018 at 12:48
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If you think about it, the maze changes every night, meaning that: A.) Grievers can climb and break your bridges, B.) The bridges would probably be made after two or more days looking at how big the maze is and like I said earlier, the maze changes every night so your bridges would just fall off. C.) Even if building bridges was possible, then Thomas and the Gladers WOULD NOT have found out any of the information given by Dr. Paige.

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  • This appears to be a comment on the answer by fgysin rather than an answer to the question "Why can't a ladder go to the top of the wall".
    – Blackwood
    Commented Aug 19, 2018 at 19:04
  • How does this answer the question of why a ladder can't go to the top of the wall?
    – Rand al'Thor ♦
    Commented Aug 20, 2018 at 9:03
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I read something in the book that they are surrounded by a sphere above and under the square in the middle of the maze, but it only opens at the elavator where the people come through, and in the doors/walls that open in the morning, so if you have seen the hunger games, you know what I'm talking about, it's an invisible barrier prohibiting them from getting out of the maze, the only way out is to; Finish. The. Maze

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    I don't remember that. Do you have any quotes?
    – Shevliaskovic
    Commented Jan 18, 2015 at 18:34
  • And people had the ability to make something like that?
    – JDługosz
    Commented Jan 19, 2015 at 2:11

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