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.
Chapters 33-35 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary: “0033”
Og confesses that he has been listening in on the group’s conversations for a long time and explains that he has superuser access in the OASIS which allows him complete freedom. Og tells the group that he wants to help them in order to “protect the spirit and integrity of [Halliday’s] contest” (314). He admits that he and Halliday met shortly before Halliday’s death so Halliday could tell Og about the contest and ask him to “intervene if it ever became necessary” (314). Og then suggests that if Wade, Art3mis, Shoto, and Aech all come to his home in Oregon, he can provide them with OASIS access and physical protection so they can carry out their plan. He commissions air travel for Shoto and Art3mis and asks Aech to drive his RV to Ohio to pick up Wade.
Wade sends out the call-to-arms email to all gunters; along with Wade’s leaked footage, it becomes hot news all over the OASIS. When Aech arrives in Ohio, Wade discovers that rather than looking like the Caucasian male avatar he has known for years, she is in fact a “heavyset African American girl” (318). Wade tells Aech that this doesn’t matter; she is still his best friend. Once Wade and Aech are airborne, Aech tells that she uses her avatar so that she will be treated better and given more opportunities. She also tells Wade that her mother kicked her out of the house for being gay, and she has been on the move ever since.
Aech and Wade arrive at Og’s home, where Og leads them to his OASIS bays to join Art3mis and Shoto. Before entering his bay, Wade asks Og why he and Halliday stopped speaking. Og answers that Halliday was in love with Og’s wife and that jealousy ended their friendship.
Chapter 34 Summary: “0034”
Wade and his friends prepare for battle. Wade uses the Leopardon robot from the Second Gate as his form of transportation. Arriving near Cthonia, he is heartened to see what looks like “every single person in the OASIS” (329) heading towards Castle Anorak. Wade finds Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto near the castle, each in their own giant robots. Sorrento and ten Sixers emerge from the castle, taunting the gunter army. Sorrento gets in his own robot—Mechagodzilla—followed by the other Sixers getting in theirs.
A supply droid hacked by Wade exits the Sixer armory with an equipment requisition order. The droid activates an antimatter fiction-induction bomb, bypasses all security checks thanks to Wade’s programming, and rolls to the roof, where it detonates the bomb and takes down the shield.
Chapter 35 Summary: “0035”
With the shield destroyed, the battle between the Sixers and gunters begins. Gunters take out all of the robot-wielding Sixers except for Sorrento. Wade and his friends open fire on Sorrento, though “Art3mis’s beam weapon [is] the only one that seemed to do any real damage” (336). Shoto charges Sorrento in order to give Wade, Aech, and Art3mis the chance to get around him. Wade calls to Shoto to join them, but Shoto replies: “Go on without me … I owe this son of a bitch some payback” (338). Shoto damages Mechagodzilla but not enough, and Sorrento kills Shoto’s avatar.
Sorrento also damages Leopardon, forcing Wade to eject. He has a chance to run inside the castle to the Third Gate but instead he decides Sorrento deserves “to have his ass kicked while the whole world watched” (330), and he activates Daito’s artifact and turns into Ultraman. Wade kills Sorrento’s avatar, deactivates Ultraman, and runs to join Aech and Art3mis inside Castle Anorak. They recite a line from Schoolhouse Rock!, prompting two additional Crystal Keyholes to appear. Together, Wade, Aech, and Art3mis open the Third Gate, but everyone is immediately killed.
Chapters 33-35 Analysis
Using Daito’s dying gift to him, Wade avenges Daito’s real-world death and Shoto’s avatar death in the OASIS. As the Hunt has gone on, Wade has matured, making more and more decisions for the good of everyone rather than his own personal gain. Had Wade left Sorrento behind and simply run to the Third Gate with Aech and Art3mis, Sorrento would have killed many more avatars—or possibly found a way to get into the Third Gate himself. By attacking Sorrento, Wade endangers his own avatar for the sake of the entire Oasis, which marks a clear change in philosophy from his “every man for himself” attitude at the start of the Hunt.
This section also contains the “big reveal” about Aech’s true identity, which has been kept secret up to this point. Wade is stunned at first to find out that Aech is so different from her avatar—though he knows that this is part of the appeal of the OASIS for many users. He quickly accepts Aech because, to him, her race, gender, and sexual orientation have no bearing on their friendship. The fact that Cline devotes so little time to this exchange in the story further reinforces the idea that people are people, and what matters is how they interact with each other—nothing else.
