Any contest is ultimately about perseverance. Whether it's training for 18 hours a day to be an Olympic gymnast or buying lottery tickets twice a week for 20 years, the moral is the same: if you give up, you won't win. In Ready Player One, Wade and all his friends have perseverance in spades. First, they spend almost five years tearing apart Halliday's clues to find the Copper Key when many others have given up. After that, they face increasingly insurmountable odds in their quest for the Egg. Throughout it all, none of them ever give up, and their perseverance pays off.
Questions About Perseverance
- What drives Wade to persevere even when the odds are stacked against him?
- Before the Copper Key is found, why do some people give up trying to discover it?
- Over the course of the Hunt, Wade ends up taunting Sorrento into killing dozens of people, shaves off all his body hair, and sells himself into indentured servitude. Where do you draw the line between perseverance and insanity?