Metaphors and Symbols
Chapter 2
Metaphors
Metaphors and Symbols are an efficient way to show the points of the author. In "Ready Player One", you will notice that Ernest Cline uses a lot of writing techniques throughout the whole book. The author connects the big idea or the emotion of the characters with his craftings. The two main techniques were metaphors and symbols. Metaphor is a figure of speech which compares two objects by hidden similarities. Ernest Cline uses metaphor to represent a hidden idea or to spotlight certain characteristics of an object. On the other hand, a symbol is a thing that represents or stands for something else. The author uses symbols as a clue to the big idea of the book, and also as a connection between the real world and the book.
Ernest Cline connects the metaphor with the character’s quality, “For a bunch of hairless apes, we’ve actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things, computers, medicine, lasers … etc. We even sent a few guys to the moon and brought them back.” (p.45, Cline, 2012). From this metaphor, we can see his lack of sympathy towards what humanity has become. He compares and sees humans as simple animals. In "Ready Player One", we can see the devastation of humanity, caused by the lack of interest in reality. However, Wade Watts experiences the importance of reality and true love. He was different for the others. We can know from the metaphor that he didn’t care and sympathy about others at the start of the book and wasn’t capable of being a leader either.
Symbols
Ernest Cline also uses the symbols to represent a big idea. Firstly, Halliday hid the easter egg in OASIS. The winner who collects the easter egg gets the enormous power and achievement, which was being the owner of the OASIS. Because the winner became the leader of the game, I personally think the qualities to be a leader. Everyone wanted to get the prize from the hunt, but Wade went through difficult processes with his knowledge, and eventually won the hunt. Additionally, there were 3 keys in the OASIS, and to win the easter egg, you needed 3 keys hidden. The contestants needed knowledge of Halliday to find three keys. Therefore, I personally think that 3 keys represent knowledge. In addition, there is a big red button described in a book. I also think that OASIS represents the ideal world. In "Ready Player One", nobody wants to focus on reality because the OASIS is so perfect. However, the world like OASIS never can be made in the real world. Therefore, I think OASIS represents the ideal world. I think the big red button represents possibility and fear. The big red button is able to shut down the whole OASIS. However, in the novel, most of the people’s lives are based on the OASIS. They spend most of the time, money, effort to this game. Therefore, if the game is shut down, most of the people would be feared to live on reality. However, it also represents the possibility of making reality as close as the ideal world, OASIS. IOI also takes a big part of the plot. I think the IOI represents the totalism and slaveries. IOI has the massive power of controlling a huge amount of people only because of their profits. If people disagree with them, IOI tries to kill them. This is similar to modern-day slavery and totalism. Therefore, I think the IOI symbolise the totalisms and modern slaveries.