A Comparison Of Odysseus And Ready Player One And The Odyssey

Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One, and Homer, author of The Odyssey, both come from different backgrounds but both share a common storyline within their writings: the pattern of “the hero’s journey”. Both Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and Homer’s The Odyssey tell the story of two men escaping their homelands to undergo life-threatening adventures. However, the characters, Wade Watts and Odysseus, differ personally. Although Odysseus from The Odyssey, Homer’s epic, and Wade Watts from Ready Player One, Ernest Cline’s dystopian novel, both leave their childhood homes to undergo life-threatening quests, Odysseus shows little personal growth throughout the story, remaining as an arrogant, self-centered man, while Wade Watts progressively develops as a character, as he transforms from “a painfully shy, awkward kid” to the winner of James Halliday’s sought after Easter Egg. Unlike Odysseus, throughout Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, Wade Watts shows personal growth as a character. Wade Watts is like a caterpillar, both grow into something better. In the beginning, Wade Watts, the protagonist of Ready Player One, displays himself as “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 video game.” (Ch. 19, p.471). Surviving in the stacks in the outskirts of Oklahoma City, he isolates himself inside his hideout, a