The Role Of Adversity In Ernest Cline's Ready Player One

Wade Watts is a geeky orphan who whose determination may shift depending on the situation. Wade started out living in his aunt's trailer at the Stacks, with very little money and his only access to OASIS was on a school-issued laptop. He then learned of the hunt for Halliday’s egg, a hunt which the winner would receive the late James Halliday’s fortune and unlimited power in OASIS. Wade becomes obsessed with the hunt and abandons school altogether trying to win. Yet, this is not the only sidetrack he faces. In Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, Wade’s main adversity and how he overcomes it shows that no matter how much you get distracted if you have the drive you can pull yourself back together.
In the novel, Wade’s greatest adversity is the number of times he becomes distracted from his main goal. Specifically, Wade loses time due to losing sight on what’s important. As Cline writes, “I would abandon the real world altogether until I found the egg”

(Cline 166). Even though he joined OASIS for schooling, he finds himself giving up hope on his education to continue competing in the Hunt. “I convinced myself that it was all right to slack off a bit because no one else seemed to be making any progress in their search for the Jade Key. The scoreboard remained unchanged. Everyone else seemed to be just as stumped as I was.” (Cline 177). For the second time, Wade loses focus. When he began to talk to Art3mis they both agreed on not becoming too close in fear of the competition. Despite this, they both cared less and less about their main challenge. Thus losing roughly a year and a half of their search.
Of course, there had to be consequences to all his actions. Although he, barely, passed High School it still does not make up for his lack of attendance.“I didn't attend the graduation ceremony. I’d stopped attending classes altogether when I fled the stack” (Cline 175). Many students look forward to walking on their graduation day, but due to him not caring enough to show up he missed an important moment in his life. “You wasted almost a year and a half screwing around and pining over some girl you’ve never met in person. The girl who dumped you. The girl who is going to end up beating you” (Cline 211). While Art3mis moved on and fixed her mistakes, Wade fell into a depressed and lonely state. This caused him to lose his winning spot on the Scoreboard.
Wade, thankfully, was able to move on from his mistakes and get his motivation back on track.

“I was going to reach the Third Gate or die trying” (Cline 266). This shows that he so determined to win the competition, that he would risk death to get there. “What he deserved, I decided in that moment, was public humiliation and defeat. He deserved to have his ass kicked while the whole world watched.” (Cline 339). Although this could be considered another distraction, since at the moment they were currently trying to enter the Crystal Gate, he felt the need to make Sorrento face public humiliation. After everything, the IOI put them High Five through, they deserved to be overpowered in front of half of the OASIS population. His perseverance can relate to the speech “Perseverance” by James E. Frost “What’s the secret of it?’ I shall say simply this: ‘I get up when I fall down.’”(Frost). This relates because even after Sorrento and the IOI pressure Wade, and force him out of his home, he uses their actions to pull himself

up.
Ultimately, Wade overcame a major adversity in the Hunt for Halliday’s Egg. For most people, they would not be able to push forwards after getting distracted from their main goal. This was not true for Wade! He shows OASIS and IOI what he is truly made of, this can be a great lesson for everyone to learn. No matter the adversity, you can have the self-determination to beat the odds and win the competition.