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Comparing the Matrix and Allegory of the Cave

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The Illusion of Reality: A Comparison of The Matrix and Plato’s Cave

The poet Thomas Gray coined the phrase “Ignorance is bliss.” The phrase states that a lack of knowledge results in happiness and that people are more comfortable if they don’t know something. We can apply this phrase to utopias and dystopias and get this scenario: imagine living in a utopic society isolated from the true dystopic world. Would you want to know that you are living a false life and that the true world around you has been hidden? If you had this information, how would you react? This scenario is the basic premise for the Wachowski brother’s The Matrix Trilogy and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both stories show humans perceiving a false utopic society that is being used to blind them from the true dystopic world. Over the course of this paper I will describe the similarities between The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave and analyze how the Wachowskis and Plato used the ideas of utopias and dystopias as a backdrop for showing human nature.

In The Matrix, humans have been enslaved by sentient machines, or sentinels, to be used as energy sources. In order to subdue the human population, the sentinels built a virtual world known as the Matrix. What each person thinks is reality, is actually a complex computer simulation. The Matrix simulates a “utopic” world where humans believe that they have freedom and choice and that their actions have a consequence on this “real” world. In reality, the real world lies in dystopic ruins after having been destroyed by a war between the humans and sentinels, and few people know the truth.

The Allegory of the Cave presents a similar setting where prisoners are trapped in a cave and subjected to a false reality. In the story, the prisoners are bound in such a way that they cannot walk or turn their necks and are forced to gaze upon a wall.

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