Ready Player One

by Ernest Cline

We had to write an analysis for class and I am really proud of mine, so Im going to post the best parts here.

My prompt was about reality and how the Osasis was reality for Wade more than the physical world. I had to explain the topic, not necessarily my view one way or the other. 

At the end is also a small argument that there is a biblical reference in this novel, and that all three parts of the Holy Trinity are actually represented. 

What is real?

It’s a question that philosophers, mathematicians, artists, and many others have been contemplating for centuries. Some believe nothing is real, that the whole world is just a trick of the senses, that physical reality is just part of an imagination. Others believe that nothing is real except for themself, because they can think, therefore, they’re an entity that must exist on some plane of reality. Who’s to say that the OASIS isn’t reality and the physical plane is just some figment of imagination? For the people existing in Ernest Cline's Ready Player One novel, it could be so, as they live in the virtual reality of the OASIS more than the physical plane we know today. 

Along with the rest of the world, the protagonist, Wade Own Watts, uses the OASIS as just that, it's the pond in the hot desert, the peace in the middle of the storm, it's an escape of the turmoil around them. The world has fallen to pieces due to humanity's failure to change our way of life and stop depleting the world's natural resources for fleeting comfort.

For most of the story, Wade is in the OASIS, and for him, having a physical body becomes an inconvenience. It became a vessel to hold his consciousness while he existed in the OASIS.  Wade actually denounces the real world at the end of this section with the line “I would abandon the real world altogether until I found the egg,” that ends chapter 16 (Cline, 166). After he’d found the first key and his home and everyone he knew in the physical world was killed in an explosion and he rents a studio apartment in Columbus in chapters 14-16 and he doesn’t leave his apartment for months. 

He can’t seem to escape reality as much as he wants to, because he is a teenage boy in the throes of his first crush. Once he gets virtually dumped by Art3mis, he goes on a downward spiral of trying to satisfy his sexual urges by going to virtaul brothels. Eventually he gives it up with “When I confronted the grim realization that virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing. At the end of the day, I was still a virgin, all alone in a dark room,” (Cline,193). This line shows him recognising that life in the OASIS isn’t real. 

With this realization, the argument that the OASIS could be reality falls apart. If the OASIS was his perception of reality, he would view the sex as real, and he wouldn’t still consider himself a virgin. If he truly considered the OASIS to be his reality, then it would’ve been real to him and he couldn’t have had this kind of, resurfacing back into physical reality. He starts to take more care of his physical body after this by exercising before logging on to the OASIS every morning, but he really does this in order to perform better in the OASIS and put his best effort into finding the keys and eggs. 

His perspective only truly shifts back to physical reality at the very end of the book with the last scene. He sees Art3mis in person for the first time and says “It occurred to me that for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had no desire to log back into the OASIS,” (Cline, 372). The comment could be made that Art3mis’s role in this book is degrading, but she becomes the only reason Wade can stand being in the physical world. That’s the whole point of their relationship. Without this last part, the whole romance has no purpose, because romance comes from love, and for many religions, love is the whole point of human existence in the first place. 

The OASIS can’t be reality because someone made it. For it to be reality, then the creator, James Halliday, would be put in a God-like position, and with the Christian God, He exists in a trinity. If Halliday is the creator, who is the Son and who is the Spirit? It could be Ogden Morrow serving as the Spirit of the holy trinity, because of what he does at the end in chapter 32. He saves the High Five and gives them fair playing ground, because Halliday burdened him with protecting the integrity, or the spirit, of the game. 

That leaves Wade as the Son, who enters the OASIS and shows the way to the eggs, like the Son entered into humanity and shows the way to eternal life. Wade even has a redemption moment, it's when Aech forgives him for ignoring him for Art3mis and allowing himself to be distracted by her. Aech forgives him  and gives him the clue he needed to get back into the hunt. Wade wins the hunt and ascends into the role of a creator and becomes “immortal and all powerful,” (Cline,363), which are two words used to describe God.

Accepting the OASIS as reality would mean that God is no longer God, but Halliday, Morrow, and Wade are God, and godliness is transferable. Wade came back to the physical world and the OASIS shifts, from being the most important thing to him, into what it was meant to be, a video game.

Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One. Dark All Day, Inc. 2011.

:)