Wade Watts From Ready Player One Character Analysis

In the two books I read this summer there are two unique protagonists. The first is Wade Watts from Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The second is Michael from I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond By Michael Oher. These protagonists face different challenges and circumstances. Nevertheless, we can identify some commonalities between them. The positive qualities of these two protagonists are their perseverance and loyalty. The negative qualities include their tendencies to villainize certain people or things and their lack of honesty. This paper will give a further explanation of exactly how these characters share these qualities. Even though Wade Watts from Ready Player One and Michael from I Beat the Odds: From …show more content…
The first example of Michael’s villainization of certain people is his relationship with Ms. Spivey. Ms. Spivey is the social worker with the state of Tennessee who is tasked with looking after Michael and his family. Throughout the book Michael and his sisters and brother view Ms. Spivey as a negative influence who wants nothing other than to tear their family apart (Oher, 75). In actuality, Ms. Spivey just wants what is best for Michael and his siblings. In Wade’s case, he likes to villainize the society he is a part of outside of the Oasis. The main reason Wade does this is because he has nothing positive going for him in the real world. He is overweight, friendless, and both his parents are dead. He generally sees the society on earth as responsible for this. He even points out the lies of society for being the reason he has trust issues (Cline, 37). The next major fault of Michael and Wade’s characters is lack of honesty. The prime example for Michael is when the child services office of Tennessee does one on one meetings with him. It is apparent that Michael has negative feelings about his family situation. However, he consistently ignores them and doesn't share his true emotions (Oher, 113). If Michael was more honest he would have been more open and willing to share his feelings and fix his problems. For Wade, we can see his lack of honesty in his slightly tumultuous relationship with his virtual friend Aech. Wade becomes so obsessed with finding the keys for the Easter egg and his relationship with Art3mis that he has a fallout with Aech. The primary reason for this is Wade’s dishonesty to Aech. An instance of this is him lying about his relationship with Art3mis to Wade (Cline, 257). He spends more time with her and gives her information that normally he would’ve given to Aech