Content warning: references to drug use, drug-related death, abuse, rape.
Below the Level One (get it? Because this book is about video games!) part we get a taste of this:
Being human sucks most of the time.
Videogames are the only thing that makes life bearable.
- Anorak's Almanac, Chapter 91, Verses 1-2
Hatred of entitled nerd Halliday rising...
And seriously, chapter 91! Who in this future would have the time, patience and endurance to read that much in one book? Especially one containing useless 1980s trivia; now made vital for survival by Halliday himself.
So the chapter properly begins with Wade Watts going about his business in his home of Oklahoma City, in a trailer park where people live in abandoned vehicles stacked up on top of one another, called, appropriately enough, "the stacks". He possesses a lot of gaming consoles and hardware, deep from the trash of the eighties, and he refers to old games - his escape from reality - as "hallowed artifacts", and the "pillars of the pantheon". Er, what? I don't get a sense of reverence here; just parroting what Halliday probably said.
Yeah, this is a constant feature in Ready Player One.
Anyway, there's exposition on everything eighties that Wade owns. The only thing I feel is worth highlighting is this:
I shut down the emulator and began to browse through my video files. Over the past five years, I'd downloaded every single movie, TV show, and cartoon mentioned in Anorak's Almanac. I still hadn't watched all of them yet, of course. That would probably take decades. (Page 14)
This is a misleading line - Wade practically knows and owns everything that Halliday did, as we'll see how effortlessly he uses a vast knowledge of the eighties, plus an expert gaming experience, to get through the egg hunt. He is only eighteen.
Wade is a Gary Stu, I am warning you now.
He mentions watching a lot of the sitcom Family Ties, because it was a favourite of Halliday's.
I'd become addicted to the show immediately, and had now watched all 180 episodes, multiple times. I never seemed to get tired of them. (Page 15)
Ahhh Family Ties - a white, middle-class people show, filled with "smiling, understanding people", and where "there was nothing so wrong with the world that we couldn't sort out by the end of a single half-hour episode (or maybe a two-parter, if it was something serious)." Of course you'd find it comforting, Wade.
There is no mention of any eighties' shows with black protagonists in the whole book - no Family Matters, no The Jeffersons, nothing with predominately African-American cast members or female protagonists, really. Make of this what you will.
Wade goes on to explain how he was practically raised in the OASIS. His father was shot dead when he was a baby, and his mother was an OASIS employee who used it as "a virtual babysitter" for her child. How charmingly neglectful. His mother was also a druggie who later died of an overdose. Don't worry, this tragedy is never mentioned again. For Wade - and the author - do not think this is a problem, being raised by virtual reality because a parent can't or won't raise you themselves. In fact, the author seems to think this is ideal.
Wade's father had also named him Wade Watts because of alliteration; like a superhero name, like Peter Parker and Clark Kent. But Wade is not a superhero - as we come to know more about him, we discover that he is in fact a pathetic shut-in who prefers not to go outside at all or exercise; just live in his virtual reality forever. Just like Halliday.
His Gary Stu status is only confirmed by the fact that he is an orphan living with a mean, "malnourished harpy" aunt (also a druggie) in abject poverty, yet this doesn't hinder him from doing what he wants all the time, from getting whatever he wants all the time.
The next few pages consist of Wade whining about how the world and life are meaningless and pointless, because the OASIS, as well as being a safe haven and the only thing making things bearable for him, revealed this depressing stuff to him as well. Essentially the OASIS showed him the truth, taught him about reality - whilst paradoxically it also serves as a fantasy land that has been his only educational tool throughout his life. He talks about having trust issues as a result of "finding out the truth" - reflecting his avoidance of human contact in general? Who knows.
We learn that the OASIS depressed Wade, made him distrust humanity. But it "saved" him, you see. Saved him from reality and its consequences. He can only trust in it. Doesn't this sound exceedingly - exceedingly - unhealthy? Like an abusive relationship?
And about Wade's depression? It doesn't manifest proper in the story, not until he loses his precious virtual reality! His long diatribe, in a nutshell, says, "The real world sucks" - and we are meant to agree. What a happy, positive influence for a Young Adult novel!
Afterwards there's this:
The year after my mom died, I spent a lot of time wallowing in self-pity and despair. I tried to look on the bright side, to remind myself that, orphaned or not, I was still better off than most of the kids in Africa. And Asia. And North America, too. I'd always had a roof over my head and more than enough food to eat. And I had the Oasis. My life wasn't so bad. At least that's what I kept telling myself, in a vain attempt to stave off the epic loneliness I now felt.
Then the Hunt for Halliday's Easter egg began. That was what saved me, I think. I'd found something worth doing. A dream worth chasing. For the last five years, the Hunt had given me a goal and purpose. A quest to fulfill. A reason to get up in the morning. Something to look forward to. (Page 19)
Except it's not real. But whatever, each to their own, I guess.
How noble of you to acknowledge the poverty in places like Africa and Asia, too - as lipservice with no further thought or any action taken to follow up on it. Such is the advantage of white privilege. Boo freaking hoo to you, Wade. Some poor kids wouldn't even have internet access, therefore no OASIS.
Next we have Wade's horrible aunt being typically horrible and taking his laptop in order to pay rent in the stacks (how...? Okay, whatever). He erases the hard drive before the aunt's typically horrible boyfriend - he has prison tattoos so you know he's evil - threatens him and snatches the laptop, because apparently the aunt couldn't do that herself. It's mentioned that the aunt - whose name is Alice - as well as being a drug addict, has a new boyfriend practically every week. This is beyond cliche.
The author really wants you to feel sorry for Wade by having people who don't matter to him be irredeemably nasty, and by having the people who do matter be dead.
One long exposition on the stacks later we're... still talking about them. Wade references Donkey Kong games in how the stacks remind him of those arcade classics. Thanks, because the readers wouldn't have figured that out on their own!
As Wade makes his way out of the stacks and escapes into his junkyard hiding place, he casually uses the word "rape" in running away from dangerous and desperate people. Reality is horrible, in case you didn't get that before.
Then, as Wade climbs further down the stacks (later he mentions that he is overweight and hates exercising - this doesn't count as exercise? And how is he being discreet and quiet from everyone?), we are introduced to Mrs Gilmore, his only friend in the real world. She literally only appears on one page, in-story, in the entire book. Apparently this typically "sweet old lady" - she owns lots of cats, for fuck's sake - shares Wade's love of the eighties. Overall she is pointless to the plot, except as a weak, cliched device, which I will get to later on.
Also Mrs Gilmore is "super-religious". Which religion? Not specified, though it might likely be Christianity, from what I could gather. I have a feeling that Cline added her in as a half-arsed way of saying he doesn't hate religious people, at least not all of them.
I never had the heart to tell her that I thought organized religion was a total crock. It was a pleasant fantasy that gave her hope and kept her going--which was exactly what the Hunt was for me. To quote the Almanac, "People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up." (Page 23)
Oh you don't say, Halliday from the Almanac? Not taking your own advice then?
Well, here is a better quote: "People who live above the glass ceiling should shut the fuck up." The glass ceiling is not broken to privileged white men like Halliday and Wade because they can choose to ignore it altogether, to not know it even exists.
The rest of the chapter is more info on Wade getting to his hideout, which he had found "in a stroke of luck". Yeah, Wade is VERY, VERY lucky throughout this book, as we shall soon witness. The hideout inside a stack of crushed old cars is, "most important, it was a place where I could access the OASIS in peace." (Page 25)
A sprinkling of pop culture references later ("Batcave", "Fortress of Solitude", very predictable stuff), and Wade grabs his OASIS console and plugs into the Matrix-- er, I mean OASIS. His avatar name is Parzival - a reference to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. How noble.
Also, Percival is the knight who founded the Holy Grail. Subtle!
This message had been embedded in the log-in sequence by James Halliday himself, when he'd first programmed the OASIS, as an homage to the simulation's direct ancestors, the coin-operated videogames of his youth. These three words were always the last thing an OASIS user saw before leaving the real world and entering the virtual one:
READY PLAYER ONE (Page 26)
End of chapter 1.
Halliday's brain was stuck in the eighties. He was a "genius", but he was also an emotionally-stunted, insecure manchild. And Wade is set on following in his footsteps. With dire consequences.
Not that the author ever realizes this. "It's just the way things are - as it always was and will ever be" seems to be the mantra of Ready Player One.
To be continued in chapter 2.
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