71 pages • 2 hours read
Ernest ClineReady Player One
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Thought & Response Prompts
These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the novel.
Personal Response Prompt
Ready Player One is rich with real-world pop culture references from the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. What are some things from a different era that you enjoy? It could be music, movies, art, a décor style, celebrities, games, or just a fondness for a particular period (think Renaissance Faires or Civil War re-enactments). How were you exposed to it, and what aspects drew you to it?
Teaching Suggestion: Use these questions to guide students toward a discussion about the cyclical nature of pop culture and how the theme of 1980s Nostalgia present in Ready Player One bolsters its popularity and represents recent pop culture trends.
- an article from The Patterning explaining the “nostalgia pendulum”
- a Newsweek article about the popularity of 1980s nostalgia that specifically mentions Ready Player One
Post-Reading Analysis
Wade and his friends live in a world marked by extreme poverty and corporate control, which they escape through the world of the OASIS. Do you think a global system like the OASIS would be a good thing or a bad thing in the real world? How close do you think we are to realizing a system like this?
