Ready Player One

Ready Player One

by

Ernest Cline

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Ready Player One makes teaching easy.

Wade Watts / Parzival Character Analysis

Wade Owen Watts is the narrator and hero of the novel. Parzival is the name of his OASIS avatar. He is 18 years old when the novel begins, and lives in the Portland Avenue Stacks in his Aunt Alice’s trailer on the edge of Oklahoma City. At the beginning of the novel Wade is shy, overweight loner whose parents are both dead and whose aunt treats him badly. He is poor and has no prospects of improving his life, and therefore spends almost all his time absorbed in the OASIS, where he obsessively studies the life of James Halliday and familiarizes himself with Halliday’s obsessions. This means that although Wade is reasonably powerless, he has a secret advantage of immense knowledge about Halliday and skill at the videogames Halliday loved. Wade is able to put this knowledge to use when he is the first person to discover the Copper Key, thereby emerging as the early frontrunner in the Easter egg hunt. Wade almost jeopardizes himself by becoming too distracted by his crush on Art3mis to sustain his early success in the hunt. However, as the novel progresses, he becomes more brave, level-headed, and mature, in part through realizing the importance of prioritizing people other than himself. By the end of the novel, Wade is ready to accept Halliday’s advice that he cannot spend all his time inside the OASIS. Although at this point Wade has won the hunt and is now a multi-billionaire who controls the simulation, he realizes that he must also embrace the real world in order to have a meaningful life.

Wade Watts / Parzival Quotes in Ready Player One

The Ready Player One quotes below are all either spoken by Wade Watts / Parzival or refer to Wade Watts / Parzival . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Reality vs. Illusion Theme Icon
).
Level One: 0001 Quotes

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 as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It’s

just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:

Luckily, I had access to the OASIS, which was like having an escape hatch into a better reality. The OASIS kept me sane. It was my playground and my preschool, a magical place where anything was possible.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0002 Quotes

My virtual surroundings looked almost (but not quite) real. Everything inside the OASIS was beautifully rendered in three dimensions. Unless you pulled focus and stopped to examine your surroundings more closely, it was easy to forget that everything you were seeing was computer-generated. And that was with my crappy school-issued OASIS console. I'd heard that if you accessed the simulation with a new state-of-the-art immersion rig, it was almost impossible to tell the OASIS from reality.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

The moment IOI took it over, the OASIS would cease to be the open-source virtual utopia I'd grown up in. It would become a corporate-run dystopia, an overpriced theme park for wealthy elitists.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS, Innovative Online Industries (IOI)
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0005 Quotes

The more I'd learned about Halliday's life, the more I'd grown to idolize him. He was a god among geeks, a nerd über-deity on the level of Gygax, Garriott, and Gates. He'd left home after high school with nothing but his wits and his imagination, and he'd used them to attain worldwide fame and amass a vast fortune. He'd created an entirely new reality that now provided an escape for most of humanity. And to top it all off, he'd turned his last will and testament into the greatest videogame contest of all time.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), James Halliday / Anorak
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0010 Quotes

I quickly lost track of time. I forgot that my avatar was sitting in Halliday's bedroom and that, in reality, I was sitting in my hideout, huddled near the electric heater, tapping at the empty air in front of me, entering commands on an imaginary keyboard. All of the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), James Halliday / Anorak
Related Symbols: The OASIS, Middletown, Ohio
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0012 Quotes

Morrow stayed on at GSS for five more years. Then, in the summer of 2022, he announced he was leaving the company. At the time, he claimed it was for "personal reasons." But years later, Morrow wrote in his autobiography that he'd left GSS because "we were no longer in the videogame business," and because he felt that the OASIS had evolved into something horrible. "It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity," he wrote. "A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect."

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Ogden Morrow aka Og
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0016 Quotes

There was no furniture in the cube-shaped room, and only one window. I stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it behind me. Then I made a silent vow not to go outside again until I had completed my quest. I would abandon the real world altogether until I found the egg.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0017 Quotes

Parzival: I've had a crush on you since before we even met. From reading your blog and watching your POV. I've been cyber-stalking you for years.

Art3mis: But you still don't really know anything about me. Or my real personality.

Parzival: This is the OASIS. We exist as nothing but raw personality in here.

Art3mis: I beg to differ. Everything about our online personas is filtered through our avatars, which allows us to control how we look and sound to others. The OASIS lets you be whoever you want to be. That’s why everyone is addicted to it.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Art3mis (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 170-171
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0018 Quotes

"You don't live in the real world, Z. From what you've told me, I don't think you ever have. You're like me. You live inside this illusion." She motioned to our virtual surroundings. "You can’t possibly know what real love is."

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Art3mis (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0019 Quotes

Standing there, under the bleak fluorescents of my tiny one-room apartment, there was no escaping the truth. In real life, I was nothing but an antisocial hermit. A recluse. A pale-skinned pop culture-obsessed geek. An agoraphobic shut-in, with no real friends, family, or genuine human contact. I was just another sad, lost, lonely soul, wasting his life on a glorified videogame.

But not in the OASIS. In there, I was the great Parzival. World-famous gunter and international celebrity. People asked for my autograph. I had a fan club. Several, actually. I was recognized everywhere I went (but only when I wanted to be). I was paid to endorse products. People admired and looked up to me. I got invited to the most exclusive parties. I went to all the hippest clubs and never had to wait in line. I was a pop-culture icon, a VR rock star. And, in gunter circles, I was a legend. Nay, a god.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis:

I cleared my throat and recited my pass phrase. Each word appeared on my display as I said it. "No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful."

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0020 Quotes

When you owned your own world, you could build whatever you wanted there. And no one could visit it unless I granted them access, something I never gave to anyone. My stronghold was my home inside the OASIS. My avatar's sanctuary. It was the one place in the entire simulation where I was truly safe.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 200
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0023 Quotes

The first text adventure game I'd ever played was called Colossal Cave, and initially the text-only interface had seemed incredibly simple and crude to me. But after playing for a few minutes, I quickly became immersed in the reality created by the words on the screen. Somehow, the game's simple two-sentence room descriptions were able to conjure up vivid images in my mind’s eye.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0029 Quotes

Then I was led into a warm, brightly lit room filled with hundreds of other new indents. They were all shuffling through a maze of guide ropes, like weary overgrown children at some nightmarish amusement park. There seemed to be an equal number of men and women, but it was hard to tell, because nearly everyone shared my pale complexion and total lack of body hair and we all wore the same gray jumpsuits and gray plastic shoes.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: Innovative Online Industries (IOI)
Page Number: 277
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0033 Quotes

In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie had used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Marie Harris
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 320
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0035 Quotes

Sorrento had tried to kill me. And in the process, he'd murdered my aunt, along with several of my neighbors, including sweet old Mrs. Gilmore, who had never hurt a soul. He'd also had Daito killed, and even though I'd never met him, Daito had been my friend.

And now Sorrento had just killed Shoto’s avatar, robbing him of his chance to enter the Third Gate. Sorrento didn't deserve his power or his position. What he deserved, I decided in that moment, was public humiliation and defeat. He deserved to have his ass kicked while the whole world watched.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Aunt Alice, Mrs. Gilmore, Daito, Shoto, Nolan Sorrento
Page Number: 339
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0037 Quotes

I cracked up a few times and got hit with score penalties for it. Otherwise,

it was smooth sailing.

Reenacting the film wasn’t just easy—it was a total blast.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 357
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0038 Quotes

"Listen," he said, adopting a confidential tone. "I need to tell you one last thing before I go. Something I didn't figure out for myself until it was already

too late." He led me over to the window and motioned out at the landscape stretching out beyond it." I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?"

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), James Halliday / Anorak (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 364
Explanation and Analysis:
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Wade Watts / Parzival Quotes in Ready Player One

The Ready Player One quotes below are all either spoken by Wade Watts / Parzival or refer to Wade Watts / Parzival . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Reality vs. Illusion Theme Icon
).
Level One: 0001 Quotes

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 as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It’s

just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:

Luckily, I had access to the OASIS, which was like having an escape hatch into a better reality. The OASIS kept me sane. It was my playground and my preschool, a magical place where anything was possible.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0002 Quotes

My virtual surroundings looked almost (but not quite) real. Everything inside the OASIS was beautifully rendered in three dimensions. Unless you pulled focus and stopped to examine your surroundings more closely, it was easy to forget that everything you were seeing was computer-generated. And that was with my crappy school-issued OASIS console. I'd heard that if you accessed the simulation with a new state-of-the-art immersion rig, it was almost impossible to tell the OASIS from reality.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

The moment IOI took it over, the OASIS would cease to be the open-source virtual utopia I'd grown up in. It would become a corporate-run dystopia, an overpriced theme park for wealthy elitists.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS, Innovative Online Industries (IOI)
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0005 Quotes

The more I'd learned about Halliday's life, the more I'd grown to idolize him. He was a god among geeks, a nerd über-deity on the level of Gygax, Garriott, and Gates. He'd left home after high school with nothing but his wits and his imagination, and he'd used them to attain worldwide fame and amass a vast fortune. He'd created an entirely new reality that now provided an escape for most of humanity. And to top it all off, he'd turned his last will and testament into the greatest videogame contest of all time.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), James Halliday / Anorak
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0010 Quotes

I quickly lost track of time. I forgot that my avatar was sitting in Halliday's bedroom and that, in reality, I was sitting in my hideout, huddled near the electric heater, tapping at the empty air in front of me, entering commands on an imaginary keyboard. All of the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), James Halliday / Anorak
Related Symbols: The OASIS, Middletown, Ohio
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0012 Quotes

Morrow stayed on at GSS for five more years. Then, in the summer of 2022, he announced he was leaving the company. At the time, he claimed it was for "personal reasons." But years later, Morrow wrote in his autobiography that he'd left GSS because "we were no longer in the videogame business," and because he felt that the OASIS had evolved into something horrible. "It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity," he wrote. "A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect."

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Ogden Morrow aka Og
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:
Level One: 0016 Quotes

There was no furniture in the cube-shaped room, and only one window. I stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it behind me. Then I made a silent vow not to go outside again until I had completed my quest. I would abandon the real world altogether until I found the egg.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0017 Quotes

Parzival: I've had a crush on you since before we even met. From reading your blog and watching your POV. I've been cyber-stalking you for years.

Art3mis: But you still don't really know anything about me. Or my real personality.

Parzival: This is the OASIS. We exist as nothing but raw personality in here.

Art3mis: I beg to differ. Everything about our online personas is filtered through our avatars, which allows us to control how we look and sound to others. The OASIS lets you be whoever you want to be. That’s why everyone is addicted to it.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Art3mis (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 170-171
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0018 Quotes

"You don't live in the real world, Z. From what you've told me, I don't think you ever have. You're like me. You live inside this illusion." She motioned to our virtual surroundings. "You can’t possibly know what real love is."

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Art3mis (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0019 Quotes

Standing there, under the bleak fluorescents of my tiny one-room apartment, there was no escaping the truth. In real life, I was nothing but an antisocial hermit. A recluse. A pale-skinned pop culture-obsessed geek. An agoraphobic shut-in, with no real friends, family, or genuine human contact. I was just another sad, lost, lonely soul, wasting his life on a glorified videogame.

But not in the OASIS. In there, I was the great Parzival. World-famous gunter and international celebrity. People asked for my autograph. I had a fan club. Several, actually. I was recognized everywhere I went (but only when I wanted to be). I was paid to endorse products. People admired and looked up to me. I got invited to the most exclusive parties. I went to all the hippest clubs and never had to wait in line. I was a pop-culture icon, a VR rock star. And, in gunter circles, I was a legend. Nay, a god.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis:

I cleared my throat and recited my pass phrase. Each word appeared on my display as I said it. "No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful."

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0020 Quotes

When you owned your own world, you could build whatever you wanted there. And no one could visit it unless I granted them access, something I never gave to anyone. My stronghold was my home inside the OASIS. My avatar's sanctuary. It was the one place in the entire simulation where I was truly safe.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 200
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Two: 0023 Quotes

The first text adventure game I'd ever played was called Colossal Cave, and initially the text-only interface had seemed incredibly simple and crude to me. But after playing for a few minutes, I quickly became immersed in the reality created by the words on the screen. Somehow, the game's simple two-sentence room descriptions were able to conjure up vivid images in my mind’s eye.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0029 Quotes

Then I was led into a warm, brightly lit room filled with hundreds of other new indents. They were all shuffling through a maze of guide ropes, like weary overgrown children at some nightmarish amusement park. There seemed to be an equal number of men and women, but it was hard to tell, because nearly everyone shared my pale complexion and total lack of body hair and we all wore the same gray jumpsuits and gray plastic shoes.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Related Symbols: Innovative Online Industries (IOI)
Page Number: 277
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0033 Quotes

In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie had used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Marie Harris
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 320
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0035 Quotes

Sorrento had tried to kill me. And in the process, he'd murdered my aunt, along with several of my neighbors, including sweet old Mrs. Gilmore, who had never hurt a soul. He'd also had Daito killed, and even though I'd never met him, Daito had been my friend.

And now Sorrento had just killed Shoto’s avatar, robbing him of his chance to enter the Third Gate. Sorrento didn't deserve his power or his position. What he deserved, I decided in that moment, was public humiliation and defeat. He deserved to have his ass kicked while the whole world watched.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), Aunt Alice, Mrs. Gilmore, Daito, Shoto, Nolan Sorrento
Page Number: 339
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0037 Quotes

I cracked up a few times and got hit with score penalties for it. Otherwise,

it was smooth sailing.

Reenacting the film wasn’t just easy—it was a total blast.

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker)
Page Number: 357
Explanation and Analysis:
Level Three: 0038 Quotes

"Listen," he said, adopting a confidential tone. "I need to tell you one last thing before I go. Something I didn't figure out for myself until it was already

too late." He led me over to the window and motioned out at the landscape stretching out beyond it." I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?"

Related Characters: Wade Watts / Parzival (speaker), James Halliday / Anorak (speaker)
Related Symbols: The OASIS
Page Number: 364
Explanation and Analysis: