Comparing Plato's Allegory of the Cave vs 'The Matrix'

610 Words3 Pages
The Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix were both great stories or truth and freedom and what a person will do to find the truth and be free. After reading and actually seeing the Matrix, and reading Plato and Descartes, there are some similarities and differences. In the movie The Matrix we find a character by the name of Neo and his struggle adapting to the truth to reality. This story is similar to an ancient Greek text written by Plato called “The Allegory of the Cave.” Both stories are different but the ideas are the same. Both stories have key points that can be analyzed and related to one another almost exactly. In the three writings, they deal with the human brain and how it functioned for the purpose of individual stories. It was very appealing as how they saw the human brain and what was its function. Neo being blinded by the light, like in Plato’s cave, when the prisoner in the cave goes out into the real world and is blinded by the light. The journey from the cave was described as impartially painful, like in the matrix; Neo seemed in some sort of uneasiness when getting to the real world; both men were given the option to stay or not; there was an image of both of them being pulled into the light; they were both prisoners, while in different ways, but never the less, still prisoners; and once they found the truth never the man in the cave or Neo could go back. Plato’s writing in the beginning was frightening. That man is shackled or confined and is only able to see what is presented to him is not a life worth living. When Socrates and Glaucon talk about the release from confinement and how that is surely better, it is easy to agree with their premises. To be able to study and question on one’s own terms is one of the great joys of life. Descartes writes of riding himself of all earlier acquired opinions, and observing everything that he

More about Comparing Plato's Allegory of the Cave vs 'The Matrix'

Open Document