“I am malformed, scarred, and small, but… abed, when the candles are blown out, I am made no worse than other men. In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers”

–Tyrion Lannister, A Storm of Swords

Wade, the protagonist of Ready Player One, is in many ways hiding in the shadows. He has aspirations of being one of the fabled heroes of lore, he chooses to don the name Parzival after one of the original grail knights, he sets himself on an almost religious quest to give himself meaning in life, and he falls in love with not so much a woman but a funhouse mirror version of a woman. All of this however, is rooted in the strange world of the OASIS.

“Anonymity was one of the major perks of the OASIS.” (2.8)

“I was a painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem and almost no social skills.” (2.19)

In the real world, Wade must hide in the shadows both literally and figuratively. He’s overweight, socially awkward, and lives a lonely existence in a dystopian ghetto. The OASIS represents that mysterious other world for him, to really be that courageous knight, to show that he’s “no worse than other men”. It’s almost as if that “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” song plays constantly in his head. In effect, you could read this whole song as Wade’s reason for his quixotic lifestyle.

He wants someone to “Hang with me in my MMO” because he’s horribly alone in real life, he’s desperate to go “many places” because he’s financially and geographically trapped in real life, and he dreads people to “see my actual face” because it’s acne ridden and chubby. But here’s the sad part, he’s “craving to emote with you” because he has no one to share his feeling with in the waking world.

“My avatar had a slightly smaller nose than me, and he was taller. And thinner. And more muscular. And he didn’t have any teenage acne.” (2.5)

It’s worth nothing that Wade is so in love, so in need of this other life, that when both his and Art3mis’s avatars cross paths for the first time, he refers to meeting her “in person”

“[Art3mis] was even cooler in person than I’d imagined.” (9.43)

Wade might live in a semi-dream world, but it is not completely false. Like Don Quixote of old, Wade’s adventure might be unusual and deviate from the normal parameters of a journey in that he doesn’t actually leave home, but in my estimation it is a hero’s journey in the classical sense.

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.” 
― Joseph CampbellThe Hero With a Thousand Faces

Does that not describe Wade? He is searching for what is his own “life-giving elixir”and he does feel like he is lacking something in his normal human experience. Are we to deny that to him? Haven’t we all felt at some point, that we need an escape? Even though Halliday is the one who creates the quest, it is Wade who gives it his own meaning; it is him who gives it its importance, who hangs it to be the sun in the sky of his universe. This fact, is what separates him from living a Truman Show-esque existence… Wade knows he is in a mirror world, but during most of the quest, he accepts it.

Which takes us to the ending. This is where the book takes what is perhaps its most unforgiving misstep. Halliday, a man who even more so than Wade should know the great shelter that the OASIS provides for outcasts, cannot simply tell him to unplug and walk away. OASIS doesn’t have to be a wholly negative thing for Wade or anyone. Telling him to put it away is like burning Tyrion Lannister’s book collection, in my mind it’s simply unjust.

As a lover of art, and fiction I earnest believe that the world outside of this one has merits and must be kept safe guarded. As Sword & Sorcery EP taught, sometimes we just need a little balance between the real and the fiction. Without both we are cursed and cursed again… knowing very little and getting that small fragment wrong too.