Essay on Examining Reality

At the beginning of “Good People,” the tones are gloomy and dreary when the reflection of the sunlight on the water shallow is dark. Yet, the darkness of the water shallow does not last long when Lane notices “part of the lake further out flashed with sun ̶ ̶ the water up close wasn’t black now,” (Wallace 257). It is at this moment, which readers can tell the tone of the story becomes calm because the angle of the sun no longer causes the water of the shallow looks dark. This setting also symbolizes Lane has a clearer mind than before because he understands no matter what decisions he makes, a consequence will always follow. Meanwhile, the tone in “A&P” is not calm, but informal. It is informal because Sammy dehumanizes the customers in A&P and refers them to sheep. He said, “the customers had been showing up with their carts, but, you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie,” (Updike 166). Sammy thinks the customers are like sheep because they blindly walk through the aisles and just follow what others are doing. They do not want to take a step forward and leave their confront zones. Therefore, Sammy thinks the sheep is a good representation of the customers. By drawing an analogy between the A&P supermarket and a farm with sleep, the author has created an informal tone and that is different from “Good

Today, people are born into a generation where people care only for themselves more than ever. People want the best and nothing but the best. In Jean Twinge’s essay, “An Army of One: Me,” it focuses on the self-esteem that people have and how it is related to the happiness in which people want to feel. Having high self-esteem will contribute to being more confident, which will lead to an individual taking on their goals head on. Also, both Leslie Bell’s, “Selections from Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” and Daniel Gilbert’s, “Immune to Reality,” offer insight on the matter of pursuit of happiness. Each individual has their own way of knowing when they are happy and only they will know when the

Conversely, differences also exist between the plots of The Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix. While both the men in the allegory and Neo live from birth in their seclusion, The Matrix differs slightly from the allegory, as Neo has a feeling that the matrix exists, and actively tries to discover what the matrix is, while the men in the cave do not try, or even think to try to escape their bondage. Additionally, when Morpheus frees Neo from the matrix Neo has the option to stay ignorant, however he choses knowledge for himself by taking the red pill that allows Morpheus to show him “how deep the rabbit hole goes” (The Matrix). In contrast, the man in Plato’s Allegory stands freed by his captors, and is forced into the light. Finally, when Neo returns to the matrix after his enlightenment, he understands the matrix better than he did before his enlightenment. On the contrary, in the allegory the man returning to the cave from the light does not understand the shadows any longer, and the men who never left the cave mock the enlightened man

Imagine living through life completely bound and facing a reality that doesn’t even exist. The prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” are blind from true reality as well as the people in the movie “The Matrix” written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. They are given false images and they accept what their senses are telling them, and they believe what they are experiencing is all that really exists. Plato the ancient Greek philosopher wrote “The Allegory of the Cave”, to explain the process of enlightenment and what true reality may be. In the movie “The Matrix”, Neo (the main character) was born into a world of illusions called the matrix. His true reality is being controlled by the puppet- handlers called the machines who

Both Plato’s Cave Allegory and the matrix discuss the topic of truth and illusion. In both of the story it was established that we humans live in the darkness, an illusion which is merely the shadow of the truth. However, once in a while a person will wake up from the illusory dream and realized the cold hard truth of reality. Should that person overjoyed of the fact that he or she discovered the truth or should that person weep in sorrow since he or she can no longer go back and continuing living in the shadow? In both Plat’s Cave Allegory and the matrix those who were thrown out of their illusions into the cold hard truth end up having to deal with the consequence that comes from realizing it. Whether it is becoming a social outcast,

The Allegory of the Cave, by Plato and The Matrix have similarities and differences when compared. These two story lines are completely different scenarios, but they both paint the same picture leading you to the question what is real?

The short stories, written by both authors Plato and Descartes; The Matrix, The Allegory of the Cave, and Meditations on First Philosophy, focuses on what individuals believe to be reality or not within the world. The stories bring on questions of what is in fact illusion. Overall, the stories provide a guide to the truth. According to Wachowski, A, & Wachowski, L (1999) in the Matrix, Mr. Anderson questions everything in the world as he knows it. He wonders if what he is involved in a computer program instead of the life as he knows it. The computer program could be controlling human beings, such as himself. Morpheus convinces Mr. Anderson that the world that he knows is an illusion and a system of deception (Wachowski, A, & Wachowski, L,

The key similarities and differences between The Matrix and Allegory of the Cave are the ongoing questions “What is reality?” and “Are we living in the real world or an illusion of the real world?” and sharing the gift of learning new feats. The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both show us how to perceive our own reality and to distinguish between what is real and what is not real. They show us that we can choose our reality based on what we have observed in life and decide on our own what we think is real or

There are a number of similarities found in certain sections of Plato's The Republic, Renee Descartes' Meditations I, and the 1999 major motion picture The Matrix. The basic tenet that fuels Socrates' Allegory of the Cave and the other two previously mentioned works is that reality through the human senses cannot be trusted, may not be true, and cannot necessarily be validated through the human senses.

The year was 1999 when a single cinematic picture shook the world of philosophy; this films name was The Matrix. This science-fiction film follows a computer hacker named Thomas “Neo” Anderson on his journey out of an artificial reality called the matrix. In the film, humans were held unconscious and against their will in vats hooked up to machines giving the machines infinite energy (“The Matrix”). While the humans were alive in an artificial reality, having no clue what is really happening to them. Philosophers everywhere struggled to find an accurate answer on how to debunk the one very popular question that arose from The Matrix, which is could humans be living in an artificial reality without knowing? But, philosophers began to notice

The Wachowski Brother’s film, The Matrix, and “The Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic are both centered on the concept of how reality is perceived. In both works, there is someone who is trapped in a false reality but then comes to know true reality. In Neo’s case, he was escaping from a computer generated reality, while in Plato’s work, the prisoner was escaping from inside a cave. Both works share the common theme of the acceptance of actual reality in order to know truth.

In real life, the cave symbolizes an individual 's community. These prisoners have no other experience, besides what they see and know from their own experience, which is very similar to individuals who stay in their own communities and never venture beyond to see what else is out in the world. From this, a person will always feel “confident about personal experience” , however “unfortunately this confidence can cause us to attach greater significance and universality to particular events than they deserve” (Ruggiero 73). Just like the prisoners, people rely heavily on their own personal experience to be the source of knowledge for what is around. However, similar to the prisoners, there is no guarantee that what is being seen is the truth of the human experience. This is because humans “engage in a complex process which draws on the behavior, knowledge, and skills...of the world we live in” (Baud & Miller). This idea further exemplifies how the mind is only aware of what it is exposed it to due to the unique personal experience. Plato successfully demonstrates the awareness of the mind with human experiences through the metaphor of a cave in Allegory of the Cave.

Within this story there are prisoners within a cave and puppeteers in control of them construct the prisoners’ realities thus giving them a false mindset. Afterwards, their minds begin to respond to the external stimuli and create from its imaginative forces a separate falsified consciousness: “By every measure, then, reality for the prisoners would be nothing but shadows cast by artifacts” (Plato, 210). The prisoners’ minds create what they undoubtedly believe to be real, yet this poses as a problem when they are actually exposed to the real world outside the cave. They become dissatisfied with the outside world and return to their unreal past lifestyle. Their brain creates the problem for them and they have no escape unless they force themselves to accept the world outside of the cave. Though that is only if their brain is willing to deal with the harshness of the sudden change. Ultimately, The Allegory of the Cave poses as a very accurate representation of the power our brain has to create problems and solve them. It is a fundamental philosophy that almost all beliefs can be traced back to so it is not surprising that there are striking similarities in terms of the plethora of positive and negative effects the mind can

The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both show us how to perceive our own reality and to distinguish between what is real and what is not real and how the people living in the Matrix world are

The brain is a crucible: a melting pot of intersecting ingredients that forges a reality that is deceptively the same, but often vastly different for each individual. That reality is a construct is a fashionable term these days; it means that we tend to see reality from a particular frame of reference. There is always a context, whether it be political, social or cultural. For those who are unable to construct a satisfactory reality, it is then that they are forced to create an alternative reality, perhaps that fulfils their dreams and meets their views and values.