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Phil 201
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Comparisons of The Allegory, Descartes and The Matrix
While in the reality of his world, the main character of The Matrix, Neo finds himself doubting what really is and really isn’t. The writers of The Matrix did an excellent job of drawing similarities to that of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Descartes’s Philosophical ideas. There are many similarities between the Allegory as well as to the Philosophical differences to The Matrix.
The first major similarity that I noticed between the Allegory and The Matrix is the fact that both Neo and the character in Plato’s work had a feeling that something was not right. The both seemed to want to gain a deeper knowledge of the world around them and believed the world was not all it seemed but that it was more than what it seemed. They believed there was a deeper meaning to what was around them. They both accepted this and began the search for deeper meaning. This allowed both Neo and the slave to understand that they are not really in control of their world. At any moment something could change. In Neo’s case the computer programmer could change a code and have a building fall on him or possibly make someone disappear from his life. In the slaves case his life, since he was born, was ran by the farmers that he worked for within the cave. Their lives are very similar. Neo, even though he did not realize it was in the same position as the slave. He was a slave himself.
The differences between The Allegory and The Matrix are few and subtle but none the less there. Neo gets help from Morpheus in the realization of the world but the slave the Allegory does not get any help from anyone and must find his own way out to the real world. The other difference was that the Matrix is placed in virtual reality, controlled by a computer programmer. The slave in Plato grew up in this cave and had no idea of what

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