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A faint memory tried to escape the locked box within his mind—shadows on the walls when he was a kid, scaring him. He longed to be back to wherever that was, to run to the mom and dad he hoped still lived, somewhere, missing him, searching for him.
This quote appears in Chapter 19 as Thomas hangs on the wall in the ivy with an unconscious Alby. Though Thomas has retained only traces of his memories, as he mentally prepares to face a Griever for the first time, his fear releases a true memory from his past life. In this moment, Thomas is able to confirm that he was once a child with a mother and father. It is his first glimpse of the identity that has been stolen from him, a memory he’s been seeking since his first moments in the Glade. The details of his past family life are still vague, and his mental reconstruction of his former life may be more of an idealized version of who he has been and what his life was like than actual fact. But the sudden access to this memory of childhood fear triggers a desire for parental comfort and allows Thomas to hope that this former life still exists, and that he might be able to reclaim it.
“It’s horrible, ya know. Why would those shucks want us to remember? Why can’t we just live here and be happy?”
After he goes through the Changing, Alby speaks these words to Thomas in Chapter 27. As the leader of the Gladers, Alby knows that the goal of the community is to survive until the Runners solve the Maze and they can all find their way home. They long to return to this world they don’t remember, though they sometimes stumble upon hints of memory. Once he goes through the Changing, Alby sees vivid memories of a world that terrifies him, and he is surprised to discover that he would rather stay in the Glade than return to the place he has remembered. He also questions why the people who have sent them there would allow them to remember the horrible world they have left behind. In his distress, Alby’s sudden assessment that they are all “happy” in this new world is based on his fresh and unexpected fear of the real world. Alby now clings to his identity as a Glader and wishes to erase his memories of his life before.
“It’s weird to feel sad and homesick, but have no idea what it is you wish you could go back to, ya know? All I know is I don’t want to be here. I want to go back to my family. Whatever’s there, whatever I was taken from. I wanna remember.”
Chuck says these words to Thomas in Chapter 30, as Thomas serves his one-day sentence in the Slammer for breaking the Glade’s Number One Rule. Though Chuck shares what little he knows about the Glade with Thomas, he most often tries to keep the mood light with his nonstop chatter. Here, for the first time, Chuck opens up to Thomas about wanting to go home. Ironically, he misses his old life even though he can’t remember anything about it. In lieu of any real memories of his former life, Chuck has developed an ideal notion of what home and family mean, though it remains vague. Chuck’s desire for the return of his memories is a cry to reclaim his former identity, though his recognition that he doesn’t know what that identity is comprised of is unsettling and depressing. Chuck’s revelation here also further endears Chuck to Thomas and prompts Thomas to promise the younger boy that he will get him back to his home and his parents. It spurs the vow that will become a driving force for Thomas throughout the rest of the novel.
