Online VS Offline: How Dave Eggers (The Circle) and Ernest Cline (Ready Player One) warn against our relationship with online media

Abstract

This bachelor thesis analyses the literary techniques used to convey a culture-critical message about our relation to online media in The Circle (Dave Eggers, 2013) and Ready Player One (Ernest Cline, 2011). Both novels are a pressing warning against our dependence on online media, and attempt to warn their readers against media. They do so by creating a contrast between the dystopian character of the novel and the utopian society as their narrators see it. This contrast is further strengthened by the opposing of the real world and the online world in both novels. Secondly, the protagonists are used to convey the warning. Both have to make a choice at the end of the novel; whether to choose for the real world or remain in the online world completely. Ready Player One features a heroic narrator, who makes the heroic choice in choosing for the real world. The protagonist of The Circle however remains a flat character throughout the novel, with whom a reader cannot sympathize, and who eventually chooses the online world over the real world. This thesis will show exactly how Cline and Eggers convey the warning in their novels.