Themes connecting The Matrix and Plato The Matrix and Platos Republic both deal with the idea of reality.
Themes connecting The Matrix and Plato
The Matrix and Plato’s Republic both deal with the idea of reality. The Matrix shares many similarities with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, including the perplexity of what is reality and falsehood. The Allegory of the Cave describes a scene where a line of prisoners is chained in a cave, so they are all watching the same images on the cave wall. These prisoners believe that these images are reality just as the citizens in the matrix believe they are living a “real” life. Both Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix focus on three major themes: belief, perception, and knowledge.
The ability to believe often presented itself in both The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave. Morpheus throughout the movie encouraged Neo to believe. Finally at the end of the movie, Neo allowed himself to believe he was “The One” and this belief led him to being able to defeat the agents and find his true self. In Plato’s Allegory of the cave, light plays a role in inspiring belief. First, the campfire in the cave allows the prisoners to see the images of the wall and believe these images are reality. Socrates also explains that the sun serves as a path to belief. The sun illuminates the prisoner’s eyes, which permits the prisoners to actually seeing true reality. A person would “conclude that the sun provides the seasons and the years, governs everything in the visible world, and is in some way the cause of all the things that he used to see” (516b). When a person is able to see, he more than likely will believe.