Tout sur le livre de Douglas Coupland : Player One
Luke thinks the Internet is a real problem that came out of nowhere with online gambling debts, porn websites and so on. He can't use the word ''sins'' to describe those things because people just watch their screens. It is an artificial world which is...
Luke, who stole money from his church, wonders « why it is that having money makes people feel so good ». I think it is a question that everyone wonders. Of course, we live in a consumer society which means money is important because without money we...
Nowadays, I think w e live through other people's eyes . For example, in chapter one Karen « undoes two buttons at the top of her dress » because she is warm but she worries about what people could think about her saying she is a « slut ». According to...
The Internet makes part of our lives as if we can not live without. We have access to the Internet everywhere anytime (laptops, tablets, phones...). For example, when Rick does not how to make a drink and wants to look it up in a book, the woman – Karen...
We are consumers and our role is to buy again and again... without thinking about consequences. For example, Karen does not understand why people « remove time-expired dairy products from their refrigerator » whereas they abandon « a bottle of Kraft Catalina...
Douglas Coupland is fascinated by new technology in Player One . He uses terms like iPhones, cameras, Youtube or social networks. In chapter one, Karen curses new cameras that people – especially young people like the teenage boy – have always with them...
Time is unstoppable , we can not stop it or return in the past because we live in the real world, in the present time. Luke thinks « if the day's events were a story, readers would have to wait for the next chapter to find out what happens next. When...
The difference between animals and humans is the word '' emotion ''. In fact, we have emotions because we have an evoluted brain. Rick says : « It doesn't matter where in the universe you are, all emotions are the same, a universal constant ». The human...
Luke is an interesting character because he was a pastor but he lost his faith in religion. Now, he is free to do whatever he wants. He is a real human being with his own failures because the human being is not perfect and he/she can make mistakes sometimes.Besides,...
Within each section of each chapter, Douglas Coupland begins in the present tense but then, he goes back to past. This method is called '' analepsis ''. There are flashbacks, a retrospective narration within a story or an incursion into the past. It troubles...
The story is told as a first-person narrative because we enter a character's mind. Each chapter is devided into five sections and each section is told from the point of view of one of the characters. It is linear like a list as if the author wanted readers...
The five characters narrate each hour as the novel counts down to a catastrophic event. Besides, Coupland plays with time presenting a novel that can be read in five hours, as he did in presenting it at 2010’s Massey Lecture . People are now so busy testing,...
In the novel, Player One is the one who tells what is going to happen in the next chapter. It is like a spoiler for people who can not wait to know. It is the same system than websites or forums for TV series. It knows characters' feelings and thoughts...
In chapter two, Karen is frozen by the non-ressemblance between the real Warren and the photo he put online. Warren duped her thanks to the Internet. On the Internet, we can post everything we want, we can invent a new life. There is a great difference...
Rachel has a life mission, she wants to be pregnant to prove her parents she can lead what they consider a '' normal life ''. In fact, the human being is formated. We are clones who do the same things : go to school, have a job, earn money, be married...
In Chapter three, the scene seems to be a war with the explosions outside like bomb attacks and the characters who hide from the sniper. They start to have a survivalist mindset . In chapter three, Karen is picking some food thinking that « Legumes, grains,...
In chapter two, Player One explains that Karen will remember a game called ''Pretend you're dead'' she played when she was a child. It can sound ironical in view of the events because now it is real. But, Karen thinks « as quickly as possible, they had...
In chapter two, Player One explains the thoughts and feelings of the characters after the death of Warren. They are traumatized and each one wonders about his/her own life and remembers about his/her past. Rachel remembers her teacher told her that every...
"Dammit, if I spend my whole life looking and looking and looking at the world, but I guarantee it, the moment I move my head away from my patch of ground will be the exact moment the earth cracks open – and if I'd been watching, for just that one second,...
"If the day's events were a story, readers would have to wait for the next chapter to find out what happens next. When it comes to paintings, on the other hand, one glance is all you need to divine what will follow. Life is more like a book than a painting."...
In chapter three, there is a succession of questions from Karen's daughter. It emphasizes the stress of the characters and the readers because the girl does not understand what is going on but her mother does not want to answer her. It is really stressful...
I am a French student in Tours (Indre-et-Loire) and I decided to explore Player One , the novel written by Douglas Coupland in 2010.
"And he has decided that, although he is a failure, failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being". _Luke Douglas Coupland, Player One : What is to become of Us
"Everything we leave behind us as we move from room to room is a husk." _Karen Douglas Coupland, Player One : What is to Become of Us
"Our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time; our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a sequence of events — a story — and when we can’t figure out what our particular story is, we feel lost somehow ." _Karen Douglas Coupland, Player...
