Category: 2012-13 Common Read: Ready Player One

With New Students Convocation now several weeks in the past, you might think that this year’s Common Read is over.  In fact, the issues present in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One are being “replayed” everyday, across campus, in the various projects connected with the University’s Deans’ Theme, which for the 2012-13 academic year is “social media.”  And, among new students themselves – in their classes, their dorm rooms, their dining commons – the book and the questions it raises still resonate.

Meanwhile, campus leaders are already looking ahead to next year’s Deans’ Theme and Common Read.  Let us know if you have any ideas about either or both of those!

And, by the way, check out the international Common Read currently underway involving Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.  But make sure you’ve done your UMass homework first!

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life Jean Kim recently acknowledged all the new UMass Amherst students who participated in the Common Read Essay Contest this year.  Here’s what she said:

“I am pleased to announce that more than three dozen students contributed to the 2012-13 Common Read Writing Contest.  Competition was tough as there were many high quality entries.  The First Prize winner was Kyle O’Connell for “Conflict and Choice in Ready Player One”, Second Prize winner was Parisa Zarringhalam for “This is for Everyone”, and Third Prize was awarded to Chana Zolty for “The Game of Life.”  Honorable Mentions were given to Serene Forrest, Grace Keane, and Samatha Kolovson.”

You can read all six of the winning essays here: http://www.umass.edu/newstudent/fall/commonreading/ .

The 2012-13 Common Read was a centerpiece of UMass Amherst’s New Students Convocation on August 31.  Ready Player One author Ernest Cline was the keynote speaker, other speakers (including the new Chancellor) referenced the book repeatedly, and prizes for the first Common Read essay contest were awarded.  Later that day, UMass Amherst new students participated in Common Read discussion groups across campus with more than 130 faculty and staff serving as discussion leaders.

The day’s events were a great way to welcome new students to the UMass Amherst community, and it was exciting to see the Common Read play such an important role.

For more on the Convocation, check out Ernie Cline’s blog.  It includes his impressions of UMass Amherst as well as some great photos, including one of the essay contest winners. Click here for more!

We’re proud to announce the winners of the University’s first Common Read Essay Contest!  We received more than three dozen responses to our invitation to new students to write about the 2012-13 Common Read: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Congratulations to the following students:

• First place: Kyle O’Connell for “Conflict and Choice in Ready Player One.”
• Second place: Parisa Zarringhalam for “This is for Everyone.”
• Third place: Chana Zolty for “The Game of Life.”

Judges were Jean Kim, Joel Martin, Alex Phillips, and David Fleming.

Thank you to all students who submitted essays to the contest.  We found your writing interesting and inspiring!

This week’s post was written by Stephanie Anjos, a rising junior who studies psychology at UMass Amherst.  As well as working as a New Students Orientation Counselor, she works at the International Programs Office and is Public Relations Officer for a latin-based multicultural organization on campus called Latinos Unidos.

There are many themes that fall beneath the umbrella we call life, including love, friendship, and family.  At the heart of these concepts are two things that all adolescents, moving forward into adulthood, seek: privacy and security.

There is truly something special about knowing that there will always be a place for you to go, or a person to run to, when times are tough.  We often take off after these things, but, as I frequently say, it can be quite exciting when what we seek turns up unexpected.

On page 25, narrator Wade Watts describes this sentiment best when he states: “I’d discovered it four years earlier . . . When I first opened the door and gazed into the van’s darkened interior, I knew right away that I’d found something of immeasurable value: privacy.  This was a place no one else knew about . . . I could keep my things here without worrying they’d be stolen.  And, most important, it was a place where I could access the OASIS in peace.  The van was my refuge.”

I think that freshmen will be able to connect with the feelings Wade expresses here as they embrace their own journey to UMass.  As we leave high school in the past, we enter college not knowing fully what to expect, but only what we’ve seen of others’ experiences, what programs prepare us for, and what movies portray.  Especially at a large university like UMass, we all aspire to find that one thing that makes us feel at home: that people really do care about us and that we’re more than just a number.  As Wade grows older, he delves more into the OASIS to escape reality, to feel more comfortable with himself.  In the UMass atmosphere, your home away from home, it is good to keep in mind that there are a variety of resources to provide you with this key vibe, one of them being involvement in activities on campus, or applying for a job that will not only let you meet others who share the same interests but will help make the school feel smaller, a cozier fit for your needs, whatever they may be.

On page 372, Wade (Parzival)’s love interest Artemis says to him “You don’t need to sell me on anything, Wade . . . You’re my best friend.  My favorite person . . . I’ve really missed you, you know that?”  Throughout the course of the novel, there is a roller coaster of emotions as the members of the High Five proceed through their adventures to win the Hunt.  Artemis’ heartfelt confession to Wade at the end demonstrates that we should do our best to stay true to ourselves as we make transitions in our lives.  It shows that we all need a shoulder to rest on at some point.

I think this is one of the most crucial lessons that we learn when we come to college.  It is one of those things that no matter how often people tell us, or however many ways it’s said, we must go through on our own to grasp it.  On page 321, Wade openly admits his shock when finally meeting his best friend Aech but then declares that he “realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could . . . We’d connected on a purely mental level.”

My point is that we are all trying to find ourselves, discovering the epitome of what makes us genuinely happy, and figuring out where we would ultimately like to steer our lives.  Everyone has a story to tell, and if we take the time to listen, we can make some of the best bonds we’ve ever had, as proven by Wade and Aech’s connection through their love of the game, carrying through into their everyday lives, not just virtually.

Ready Player One, in its creative way expressing the art of technology, is a novel that illustrates what we, as individuals, go through on a daily basis.  What are some interesting themes or things that you found/learned as you read the book?

Jane Austen once described the ideal subject matter of a novel as “3 or 4 families in a country village.”  You don’t have to have read Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility to see how that recipe could work; and you don’t have to be a novelist to appreciate, for storytelling, the value of focusing on a narrow slice of reality and burrowing deeply into its inner workings, its inhabitants’ rich interrelations, the apparent ordinariness of day-to-day lives slowly revealing universal themes and insights.  Austen’s advice is a reminder of the inherent pull of characters deeply drawn, scenes lovingly portrayed, plots patiently unfolded.

Contemporary fiction, on the other hand, sometimes seems to be all about references to pop culture.  Readers are pulled into a story not by character, scene, or plot but by winks and nudges, knowing allusions to the signs and symbols of our globally networked entertainment culture.  That’s a recipe for superficiality, cynicism, and homogeneity, right?

Ready Player One is obviously about more than just references to pop culture.  But it is heavily laden with allusions to popular movies, songs, music videos, television shows, comic books, cartoons, novels, and videogames.  Sometimes it seems like Wade’s quest to find Anorak’s Easter egg is not so much an attempt to solve a puzzle James Halliday has created as it is to replicate with exacting precision Halliday’s own experience of living in a commercial, consumerist, entertainment-obsessed culture.

And yet maybe that’s part of the point of this novel, one of the messages its readers will leave with, knowingly or not.

On the one hand, experiencing popular culture – seeing the movies everyone else is seeing, listening to the music everyone else is listening to, watching the television shows everyone else is watching – is an important way that young people in particular connect to others, feel part of a world larger than their own, and negotiate their identities, values, and goals.  On the other hand, an all-consuming devotion to popular culture can be a road to emptiness.

What do you think?  What role does popular culture play in your life?  What would James Halliday, or Wade Watts, or Ernest Cline say on this issue?

The deadline for the Common Read Essay Contest is about a month away – still plenty of time to finish Ready Player One and write a short essay about it!  As mentioned earlier, this year, as part of the Common Read, NSO is sponsoring a voluntary Essay Contest, open to all incoming first-year students.  Here is the Fall 2012 Common Read Essay Prompt:

At the heart of Ready Player One is a treasure hunt, full of puzzles to solve, villains to vanquish, and opponents to out-score.  And yet unlike a lot of “fantasy” fiction, the book often feels quite realistic, as if it were set in our world, only a few decades into the future.  Write an essay in which you connect the book to issues or problems relevant to you today.  Use examples from the book to support your analysis.

The contest rules are as follows:

1. All fall 2012 incoming first-year students at UMass Amherst are eligible to enter.
2. Essays should be between 2-4 pages long, or about 500-1,000 words, typed, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins and 12-point type.
3. Quotations from Ready Player One should be appropriately marked and cited, with page numbers in parentheses.
4. The first page of the essay should include your name, campus address, phone number, UMass email address, and title.
5. Essays should be submitted electronically as an email attachment (either PDF or Word) to commonread@acad.umass.edu.
6. Essays must be received no later than Monday, August 20, 2012, 5:00 pm EST.

Winners will be announced at New Students Convocation on August 31.  First-, Second-, and Third-Place winners will receive gift cards from the University Store and have a chance to meet author Ernest Cline.

Questions about the contest should be directed to Prof. David Fleming, English Department, UMass Amherst, at dfleming@english.umass.edu; or call NSO at 413-545-2621.

This week’s post was written by Jeffrey Larnard, a rising senior nutrition major at UMass Amherst.  In addition to being a New Students Orientation Counselor, he works at the Learning Resource Center tutoring introductory science classes and is the creator and main contributor to the music blog fivehundreddaysofmusic.wordpress.com.

Music can be a powerful force.  As Wade declares his love for Artemis and is ultimately rejected, Cyndi Lauper’s 1980 slow-dance-friendly hit “Time After Time” is playing.  In his defense though, it would be hard not to declare your love to someone listening to that song.  For current UMass students, that might seem like a ridiculous statement, but we have our own slow, emotion-laden songs that we grew up with.  Songs like Aerosmith’s ubiquitous “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing,” Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be,” O-Town’s “All or Nothing,” and many more have helped young men and women navigate the treacherous waters of middle and high school dance floors and beyond.

The songs may change over time, but it is the same borderline (or way over the line) corniness and wistful romanticism that remain constant.  These are the elements that we can connect with, and drive music’s innate ability to be both personal and universal.  Throughout Ready Player One, there are some music references that soundtrack the book, but, to be honest, not many current students are likely loading their iPods with the newest Duran Duran and Rush songs.  For that reason, I wanted to re-soundtrack Ready Player One, selecting other songs that fit with the scenarios and themes of the novel.  I have some ideas.

From page 191:

After Artemis stops talking to him, Wade goes through a period of depression where he can barely get out of bed, but eventually uses the “break-up” to motivate himself to vastly improve his fitness.  I like Lana del Rey’s “Video Games” in this spot, mostly because it’s the only melancholy love song that also references video games multiple times.  When Lana heartbreakingly croons “I heard that you like the bad girls, honey/Is that true,” I thought the song was a good fit for this spot.

From page 266:

This is the beginning of Wade’s plan to infiltrate Castle Anorak.  He notes that his plan is ‘bold, outrageous’ and knows that it might kill him.  The chapter does, after all, end with the proclamation, “I was going to reach the Third Gate, or die trying.”

I couldn’t help but connect Wade’s mind state in this scene to Jay-Z’s “Moment of Clarity.”  The somber lyrics and straightforward, menacing production supplied by Eminem, fit perfectly with the mood Ernest Cline is trying to convey. Wade indeed has a moment of clarity and realizes in order for him to reach the third gate, he must go through with his plan, no matter the repercussions.

From page 372:

This is the Nicholas Sparks like romantic ending that I’m sure every reader is rooting for, when Wade and Samantha finally kiss.  Naturally it needs a fitting emotionally driven song with dramatic production.  And no one does emotional and dramatic quite like Coldplay.  There are several song choices from Coldplay you could go with here, but I’m picking “Life in Technicolor ii” off their Prospekt’s March EP.  The instrumental backing is suitably epic, but I like how it’s genuinely hopeful, which is how I believe the ending is supposed to read.  There are also lyrical themes of a hostile outside world, and of course, love, which both fit this scene perfectly.

Realistically, there are likely thousands of songs that could soundtrack Ready Player One and these three selections are merely scratching the surface.  Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable exercise, and something that could be discussed for hours on end.  What are other songs that could serve as the soundtrack for specific scenes in Ready Player One?

This post was written by Billy Rainsford, a rising senior at UMass Amherst who studies English and Political Science and works with incoming freshmen as both a Resident Assistant and New Students Orientation Counselor.  He also writes for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.

Early on in Ready Player One, narrator Wade Watts outlines one of the key reasons the OASIS has proven so popular: anonymity.  The OASIS provides an escape from the painful realities of the physical world, and many players use the opportunity to leave their real selves behind:

Anonymity was one of the major perks of the OASIS. Inside the simulation, no one knew who you really were, unless you wanted them to.  Much of the OASIS’ popularity and culture were built around this fact.  Your real name, fingerprints, and retinal patterns were stored in your OASIS account, but Gregarious Simulation Systems kept that information encrypted and confidential. (28)

Wade initially takes pride in his efforts to hide his identity, and is confident that no one will connect the elite gunter Parzival with a poor high school student in Oklahoma.  There is a very clear line drawn in Wade’s mind between his two identities, and this is what gives him his sense of security that no one else will connect the two, either.

This sense of security comes crashing down around Wade, of course, when Sorrento reveals IOI’s knowledge of his true identity and his whereabouts:

“That’s right,” Sorrento barked.  “We know who you are. Wade Owen Watts. Born August twelfth, 2024.  Both parents deceased.  And we also know where you are.  You reside with your aunt, in a trailer park located at 700 Portland Avenue in Oklahoma City.  Unit 56-K, to be exact.  According to our surveillance team, you were last seen entering your aunt’s trailer three days ago and you haven’t left since.” (142)

As careful as Wade was in protecting his online identity, he was still ‘discovered’ by the sixers, with dramatic consequences.

The life-or-death nature of Wade’s predicament aside, the reason he was found out is one many incoming freshmen will be able to relate to: he was not careful enough in protecting his information online.  Teenagers today are constantly lectured on the importance of care in posting personal information on the internet.  In particular, the class of 2016 will be familiar with warnings that inappropriate posts online could affect the college admissions process; next, they’ll be hearing about the dangers it poses to a job hunt too.

Young adults are pushed into an uneasy relationship with social networking.  Besides the social benefits it offers, the wider world is starting to come around to the practical benefits of sites like Facebook: UMass Residential Life, for example, now encourages incoming freshmen to connect with their roommates through Facebook or Twitter before arriving, and offers help through its own Facebook page.  The unease comes when this message conflicts with the warnings students receive about meeting people online.  Though it may seem obvious that a future roommate is safe to connect with, where is the line drawn?

Part of the Orientation process at UMass seeks to educate students about that line.  During the “Keeping it Safe” presentation by the UMass Police Department, UMPD’s Community Outreach Unit now talks about internet privacy, citing the rule, ‘don’t post anything online that you wouldn’t put on a highway billboard.’

Comparing Facebook to a billboard is more apt than some students may think.  As Chris Conley of the American Civil Liberties Union writes:

[T]he privacy control that Facebook has given to users over the sharing of information with general Platform apps and pages is extremely crude: users are only given the choice between having much of their information visible to any application or site they or their friends use or not allowing the sharing of any information with any application or site at all.  That means that users who want to use even a single handy app will have to choose between not using that app or opening up all their information to any third-party app used by themselves OR their friends.

In general, UMass students would be wise to guard themselves as much as possible, and another applicable rule would be the age-old ‘better safe than sorry.’  Even maximizing the privacy settings on a site like Facebook may not be enough, as Wade unfortunately found out.  Therefore, simply not posting anything that could be deemed personal or questionable is probably the safest route.

Wade’s final bit of advice shows to what extent information should be considered personal.  “It never occurred to me that attending school on Ludus was something I needed to keep a secret, [he] said.  So I didn’t.”  This cap on personal information may make a Facebook profile less exciting, but protect a student as they move forward during their time at UMass and beyond.

More than Oklahoma City or Columbus, Ohio, the “real” setting of Ready Player One is the Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation – the OASIS – a massively multiplayer online role-playing game designed by James Halliday and run by his company Gregarious Simulation Systems.  In the year 2045, according to narrator Wade Watts, the OASIS is the “globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis” (1).

If the offscreen world that Wade describes in the book, a true dystopia, seems far into the future (although not that far!), the “open-source reality” of the OASIS seems at times eerily contemporary.  Many people today are just like eighteen-year-old Wade, who sees his computer screen as ”an escape hatch into a better reality” (18):

You could log in and instantly escape the drudgery of your day-to-day life.  You could create an entirely new persona for yourself, with complete control over how you looked and sounded to others.  In the OASIS, the fat could become thin, the ugly could become beautiful, and the shy, extroverted.  Or vice versa.  You could change your name, age, sex, race, height, weight, voice, hair color, and bone structure.  Or you could cease being human altogether, and become an elf, ogre, alien, or any other creature from literature, movies, or mythology.

In the OASIS, you could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity, because your anonymity was guaranteed.  (57)

Given the state of the off-screen world depicted in Ready Player One, readers will readily see the attraction of the OASIS for Wade.  But in our pre-apocalyptic “actual” world, spending enormous amounts of time and energy in virtual reality is almost as popular and consuming as it is for the characters in this novel.  Why?

Last week, we looked at Steven Johnson’s defense of video game playing as a cognitively challenging kind of problem-solving with enormous benefits for players.  According to Johnson, the combination of intense exploration (“probing”) and long-term goal-seeking (“telescoping”) required by today’s video games can give devoted players practice in just the sort of sophisticated intellectual skills that contemporary society needs and rewards.

But isn’t it possible that these games are also addictive and that they are turning us away from the world and our fellow human beings in ways that are harmful to us both individually and collectively?

Perhaps the most eloquent statement of this argument is Sherry Turkle’s recent Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Basic Books, 2011).  After interviewing dozens of avid online game players, who devote as much time and energy to their online avatars as to their “actual” lives, Turkle became alarmed.  The more opportunities we have for electronic connection, she argues, the more alone we seem to feel; the greater freedom to create new identities for ourselves in virtual reality, the more insecure we become:

We enjoy continual connection but rarely have each other’s full attention.  We can have instant audiences but flatten out what we say to each other in reductive genres of abbreviation.  We like it that the Web ‘knows’ us, but this is only possible because we compromise our privacy, leaving electronic bread crumbs that can be easily exploited, both politically and commercially.  We have many new encounters but may come to experience them as tentative, to be put ‘on hold’ if better ones come along . . . We can work from home, but our work bleeds into our private lives until we can barely discern the boundaries between them.  We like being able to reach each other almost instantaneously but have to hide our phones to force ourselves to take a quiet moment.  (280)

Turkle describes families whose members are “alone together, each in their own rooms, each on a networked computer or mobile device.  We go online because we are busy but end up spending more time with technology and less with each other.  We defend connectivity as a way to be close, even as we effectively hide from each other” (281).

The author of Ready Player One is clearly aware of both the attractions and dangers of virtual reality.  Wade’s life would be unbearable without the OASIS; yet he also yearns for “real” connection with “real” others.  And what about us?  Are we sacrificing too much for the sake of being “wired”?