preview

Comparing The Matrix And Plato's Allegory The Cave

Decent Essays

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one", Albert Einstein. This quote from Einstein touches on how reality is not something that one can fully grasp without questioning the reality that you are in presently and both Plato and the Matrix address through their work. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he discusses how society controls information so that the people know only what they need to know and nothing more. In the Matrix they show how society has used the control of information to create an illusion of a "dreamworld" as Morpheus calls it, to crete a false sense of security and happiness. This illusion was supposed to keep the people satisfied so that the citizens would not want to question what was going on and dig …show more content…

Which in society you have the choice to question society and look deeper into society and find all the information that has been kept from you. This control of information is used to hide the information that the government does not want to be common information or information that has been misconstrued to uphold their dreamworld that they have created to keep the people happy. Or you can just accept everything as you believe it to be and continue living in the dreamworld that was created for you to live in. The next similarity is when Neal is in a womb like container and he had numerous tubes connected to him, all of these tubes symbolize our need for and ties to society. As an individual we are tied to society through the necessities of life such as; clothing, housing, food, and jobs, and through these same aspects we are contributing to society so it creates a cycle of dependency. We are dependent because we are unable to create most of these things by ourselves without the help of society. for example to build a house in order to get wood or lumber to build it you would need someone to manufacture it so that you would have boards for siding and roofing, and beams and boards for walls and supports. This one necessity is just an example of our dependency on society as an individual. Since we are so dependent on society that corporations know that they can exploit us without us knowing it. An example of this from the matrix would be when Morpheus is apologizing to Neal for having to retrain his mind and he tells him "it had to be done, I had no choice." He is talking about how Neal is seen to be the "Chosen" one and so Morpheus felt like he had no choice but to make Neal retrain his mind even though he is technically too old

Get Access