Everyone has asked some of the same question, at some point in life: Why are we here? What is the point of all this? What is “reality,” and what we supposed to do with or about it? Plato, a famous Greek philosopher who wrote the “Allegory of the Cave,” is one of the best and most understanding efforts to explain the nature of reality.
The Matrix a famous movie that was premiered in 1999, modernizes the original allegory and adds a more humanistic appeal. It also focuses more on human emotion and feelings. The Matrix is parallel with the “Allegory of the Cave”, in some significant ways. Both tell us the same thing about the process of how a person becomes enlightened, the responses and reaction to being freed from their chains and being forced to experience life outside the cave and the matrix.They are many similarities that these two stories share.
In the Matrix, Neo the main character is trapped in a false reality created by a computer program. The program was created by machines that took over the planet. While in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a prisoner is able to comprehend the reality of the cave and the real one outside the cave. Both stories share the fact that both worlds are controlled by a greater power. Neo lives in a world which is controlled by the matrix while Plato’s prisoner lives in a world, or cave, controlled by the form holders. They both also manage to escape from the world as they know it and come to know the world as it really is. Neo comes to realize that the life he has been leading so far is nothing but the life of a slave, shaped under the control of the Matrix, protected by the agents.
Plato’s prisoner comes to realize first that the shadows he is looking at are not the truth, they are just shadows cast on the wall by the form holders.Another similarity that these stories share is the process to become free to a reality that change their mine completely. Neo become free when he chooses between the two pills (blue and red). He has to adapt to his new reality which in this case is the real world, when he wakes up, he mentions that his eyes hurt, and Morpheus tells him that he never used his eyes before, so he would adapt soon. In the Allegory the prisoner set free from their chains and walk out of the cave into daylight, and he feel the same as Neo his eye hurts because he never used them before and he has to adapt to the sun. The characters simultaneously experience shock and then a feeling of fear when they first perceive what is real.
The characters in both stories realize that they are prisoners and are completely unaware the reality they think they know is false. Both stories also share the gift of learning new feats. Neo, in the Matrix, is able to perform physically impossible feats once he learns to manipulate the matrix. The prisoner in the “Allegory of the Cave” learns infinite knowledge once he breaks free from the cave.
