Ready Player One - Part III

                The ending of Ready Player One was partially what I had anticipated; the main character Wade Watts won Halliday’s Easter Egg competition. But there were several major twists. I was surprised when I found out that his oldest and closest friend Aech, a typical white guy in the OASIS was actually a black lesbian girl. Secondly, I was not expecting the competition to end as dramatically as it did. An all-out-war on the government players no one liked and they ended up detonating a nuclear bomb killing everyone all of which was completely unexpected. The competition was also extremely close right up until the very end and I was surprised how willing Online Industries was to threaten or kill their competition in order to win. Aside from all these occurrences, the ending was excellent. I liked how the leading players all met in real life, became friends, and teamed up. I thought it was cool how Ogden Morrow, the other founder of the OASIS reached out to the top four players and helped them win to preserve the integrity of the competition. I also liked how his mansion was designed to be like the elf city in Lord of the Rings, which was pretty cool. In the beginning of the story Wade Watts is an overweight loser who lives in a trash heap of recreational vehicles and at the end he is a billionaire and has friends and a girlfriend.

                My favorite thing about the ending was that it contained so many elements that I was not expecting! It kept me on my toes up until the last page and once I had finally finished reading I wanted to know what happened next. I hope Ernest Cline writes a sequel because the end of Ready Player One leaves a lot of possibilities for the future of the champions. Just like the rest of the story, the ending was unpredictable. This made the entire text so much more interesting to read, I was constantly hooked and curious to know what would happen next. Despite how strange the ending was, it was pretty obvious that Wade would be the winner of the competition right from the start. Nevertheless, the ending is certainly appropriate, it was fitting and all of the players both good and bad got what they deserved. The Online Industries’ leaders went to jail for murder and the young winners had everything they had ever dreamed of in the palm of their hand.

Ready Player One Part II

It was easy for me to connect with the purpose, experience, and values that were expressed in the text because of the author’s elaborate details in every situation throughout the text.  When the real world is too real for someone 30 years from now they most likely plug themselves into a virtual world called the OASIS to escape. The main character Wade Watts is a dedicated OASIS user who spends the majority of his time online because his real life contains too much misfortune and stress to deal with. People in 2014 often shy away from their problems too, and many people find their relief in technology now. I know that when I’m stressed out I usually turn to my phone, television, or computer. Wade experiences fantastical things quite often throughout the story, things that are so outstanding they are hard for me to imagine being possible. However in the story, the intense descriptions were easy to picture and imagine almost like watching the scenes play out in my mind as I read. It helps that the author uses hundreds of references from the late twentieth century because there are so many of them I already understand and the ones I do not are interesting to learn. The purpose of Ready Player One is a little vague, but to me the purpose is point out corruption in the present or possibly just to predict what the future may possibly be like similar to how George Orwell did in his book,” 1984.” Regardless of the author’s intentions, it was extremely easy for me to connect with this text because I am something of a nerd myself and even if I was not this story is still excellent.

                In the story, all of the characters who were good were competing against each other and a government agency that controlled the internet. They were competing for a prize called Halliday’s Easter Egg, James Halliday was a founder of the OASIS and his prize consisted of the fortune he had collected during his lifetime, his estates, and his character’s power along with control of the entire OASIS server. At the end the good characters team up to fight the government because if they won, the OASIS would be ruined forever. The government agency attacks and harasses the people who are ahead of them in the competition and cheat so they can get an upper hand. By teaming up the players who are good win the competition and the agency’s worst members are brought to justice.