To Immerse is to Escape: Analyzing the Power of Simulacra and Simulation in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and Ready Player Two

Abstract

In this study, we shall endeavor to analyze Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011) and Ready Player Two (2020) to analyze the trope of virtual reality from primarily a Baudrillard’s theory of ‘Simulacra and Simulation’. This study aims to show how in a hyper-immersive virtual reality environment, all distinctions between reality and virtuality simply ebb away when a new paradigm shift occurs in the form of the triumph of the virtual over the real. In such a hyper-immersive virtual environment, the virtuality does not merely serve as an alternative mode of existence where one logs in to escapes from reality, rather it becomes the dominant shaping force that begins to mold the reality after its own pattern.