The Eye of Minds

Throughout the novel, Michael reminds himself that the things that he experiences in the VirtNet are not real. This non-reality is something that he uses to comfort himself as he sees brutal, horrifying things in the virtual world. He calculates the cost to himself in his ability to stay alive and little else; when he speaks of returning to the real world, he flippantly discusses seeing a therapist and putting the trauma of what he has witnessed behind him. Even so, the novel presents the things that Michael witnesses as having a mental and emotional effect, even if they do not have a lasting physical effect. Dashner’s novel therefore examines the mental repercussions of virtual reality. 

The most dramatic trauma that Michael and his friends suffer in the novel is the violence they experience when in the war-based game Devils of Destruction. The three teenagers are horrified not only by the pain they experience and extreme violence they witness, but by the realization that the adult players who populate the game perpetuate this violence because they think it is fun. The novel does not explicitly state that video games inherently desensitize their players to violence in a manner that encourages them to commit violence in the real world, which is a common criticism against games that imitate violence.