A Study Guide for Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780028671352

Book preview

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Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

2011

Introduction

In his 2011 debut novel Ready Player One, author Ernest Cline describes a feeling familiar to gamers the world over:

Playing old videogames never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away.

The novel's protagonist, Wade Watts, regularly escapes from the world of 2044, where society is deteriorating, to the vast virtual reality of the OASIS, where life was simple. Wade is not alone; just about everyone spends most of their time there, working, attending school, and playing—losing themselves in the OASIS. James Halliday, the late creator of the OASIS, felt exactly the same way Wade feels about video games, but he also understood that even the best virtual environment is no match for real life. He did not want the system to be misused as a way to avoid life or just for corporations to make profit. His virtual world earned him billions of dollars; however, he made sure it would be accessible to everyone. His advertising slogan was "The OASIS—it's the greatest videogame ever created, and it only costs a quarter."

Halliday was determined to maintain the egalitarian nature of the OASIS, even after his death. His will introduces a game that would award the winner not only his huge fortune but also control of the OASIS, and the nature of the contest—full of puzzles that only a fellow video-game fan and pop-culture nerd could solve—was set up in the hope that someone like him would win. Although much of Ready Player One's action takes place in Halliday's computer-generated universe, Cline stresses a theme of genuine human connection, giving heart to a fast-paced adventure story chock-full of pop-culture references.

Author Biography

Cline was born in Ashland, Ohio, on March 29, 1972. Much like Wade in the novel, Cline was a rabid fan of video games in his childhood and young adulthood, and Ready Player One reflects his particular fondness for the movies and music of his youth in the 1980s. He earned money to support his gaming and pop-culture hobbies with a series of odd jobs, doing everything from gutting fish to working in a video store, until he landed a job in tech support. Eventually he decided to leave that job and throw himself into creative pursuits, including spoken-word poetry and screenwriting.

Cline's spoken-word performances met with great success. Having moved to Austin, Texas, he became the Austin Poetry Slam champion in 1998 and 2001, which earned him the right to travel to the National Poetry Slam with the Austin team both years. Samples of his spoken-word verse were recorded for the 2001 album The Geek Wants Out and later included in the 2013 volume The Importance of Being Ernest: A Collection of Essays & Poetry, 1997–2001.

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