READY PLAYER ONE
End of book notes
KEY CHARACTERS
• Wade Watts: Protagonist and hero of RPO; Parzival is his avatar: round character who
grows emotionally and swears off the OASIS one he meets Art3mis in person
• Shoto and Daito: Two expendable samurai avatars who are part of the High Five fairly
flat characters; mainly serve as a plot device to guarantee the Beta capsule gets back
into Wade’s hands during the final battle
• I-Rok: The most immature and selfish of the characters; after alerting the sixers to the
first gate, he simply disappears
• Aech: Helen Harris in real l ife, an African-American women in the real world, is Wade’s
best male friend in the OASIS
• Art3mis: Samantha Evelyn Cook in the real world. Wade’s OASIS, and eventual real
world, crush. They wind up cooperating more and more as the plot progresses
• Nolan Sorrento: A very, very bad man (according to the Gunter community), leads the
Sixers and is influential at IOI; he is defeated at the last battle
• Ogden Morrow: Co-creator of the OASIS; he comes into the plot much more in the
later part of the book; influential in getting the real-world character together at the
end of the book
• James Halliday: Co-creator of the OASIS; he created the Egg Hunt
PLOT
• Exposition: we learn a contest was created by James Halliday; contestants
must search a massive virtual worlds and uncover clues for a chance to win
• Rising Action: Wade Watts (Parzival) is the first person, after five years of
searching, to find the first key
• Conflict: Primarily an external conflict (person vs. person/person vs. society)
between fellow Gunters and the IOI corporation led by Nolan Sorrento
• Climax: Wade allows himself to be captured by the Sixers in the real world
and becomes an indentured servant; he learns many secrets about IOI and
learns he and his friends are all targeted for execution. He escapes from the
building and the end events promptly begin
• Falling action: Wade arrives at the last gate
• Resolution: Giant robot battles, a massive bomb, and an extra life (that
quarter from the Pac-Man game) all lead to to Wade winning the contest.
He is happy with Samantha (Art3mis) in the real world as the book ends
THEMES/TOPICS
• Friendship: Working together with like-minded people is a
way to achieve success
• Parzival, Aech, Art3mis, Shoto, and Daito eventually team
up to destroy IOI’s chances at success
• Dissatisfaction: When people and societies are pushed to
their natural limits, negativity takes over and becomes the
new normal
• Wade and many others retreat into the idealized, selfcontrolled world of the OASIS
• Others?
SYMBOLS
• Keys and Gates: Yes they are actual keys and gates, but they serve the
purpose of showing us the obsession which overtakes Wade/Parzival
• The Egg: Animals hatch from eggs, so the egg, in pretty much all literature,
symbolizes rebirth. It is a way for Halliday to live on after death, and also
serves as a rebirth for Wade at the end of the novel. We last see him happy
in the real world after a loooooooong incubation time in the OASIS
• Others?