Preview

Comparing Matrix And Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
306 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Comparing Matrix And Plato's Allegory Of The Cave
Imagine several prisoners who have been chained up in a cave for all of their lives. They have never been outside the cave. They face a wall in the cave and they can never look at the entrance of the cave. Sometimes animals, birds, people, or other objects pass by the entrance of the cave casting a shadow on the wall inside the cave. The prisoners see the shadows on the wall and mistakenly view the shadows as reality. However, one man breaks free from his chains and runs out of the cave. For the first time, he sees the real world and now knows that it is far beyond the shadows he had been seeing. He sees real birds and animals, not just shadows of birds and animals. This man is excited about what he sees and he goes back to his fellow prisoners in the cave to tell them about the real world. But to his astonishment, they don’t believe him. In fact, they are angry with him. …show more content…
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.

The very few differences between these two works include the fact that the Matrix has no forms while the Allegory of the Cave does. Also, unlike Plato’s prisoner, who manages to find his way out of the cave without any help from others, Neo is helped out by Morpheus.

The movie "The Matrix" is a giant reference to Plato's myth, with the Matrix as the cave, and Neo being an escapee. Neo's first words outside of the Matrix are "My eyes
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Comparing Plato And Socrates 'Allegory Of The Cave'
    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Comparing Plato And Socrates 'Allegory Of The Cave'

    Allegory of the cave is written as a dialogue between Plato’s brother Glaucon and Socrates. It tells the story of human beings living in a cave. They have been there since they were little. Unfortunately, this is not a normal kind of life we would think of. These people were all sitting on the ground, tied in chains. Their necks, their legs, were all fettered, and they were only able to see what was right in front of them. They could not move their heads. Far above them there was a fire. Also, between them and the fire a wall was built, above which the puppets were shown. The only thing those people were able to see was the shadow of those puppets and they mistakenly thought that this shadow was actually the reality.…

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Truman Show: Plato, Allegory Of The Cave
    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Truman Show: Plato, Allegory Of The Cave

    In the cave lives chained prisoners who can not move or escape from where they stand. They do not know of the “real world” that exists outside of the cave because a wall separates these two worlds. Since the prisoners have never been set free they do not know the truth about “real life”. The prisoners in this story represents Truman Burbank because, all of his life he has been trapped inside of this “cave”. Since Truman has never discovered the truth about his fake, televised life, he does not know what the real world has to offer. In Plato, Allegory of the Cave, one of the prisoners finally has the chance to leave the cave and explore the real world. Once he does this, he realizes the life he has been living inside the cave is not realistic and he refuses to go back in the cave. This also connects to the situation Truman is put in because once Truman realizes the life he has been living is fake, he escapes to the real world. He leaves the “cave” he spent most of his life in to move on, challenge himself and enter a new…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Comparing Plato's The Cave And The Christian
    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Comparing Plato's The Cave And The Christian

    Suppose people were born in a cave and from birth they were chained up and unable to turn their heads. All they could do was to look straight ahead at a wall. Far behind them there was a fire burning and in from of that fire people would walk with object in their hands, statues and the like. All the chained prisoners could see would be these shadows on the wall, they could hear the noises and sounds that some of the people made and would think that those shadows and noises were really. Their idea of what was true, what was reality would be skewed. All they had ever known was the shadows.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Compare And Contrast Plato's Allegory Of The Cave
    • 1391 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Compare And Contrast Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

    Plato and Niccolo Machiavelli magnificent ideologies for leaders of the world. First Plato’s dialogue Allegory of the Cave described what would happen if prisoners were chained to a wall and could only see the shadows before them. The shadows were visuals on the wall from the fire blazing behind them. Plato stated a quote about what would happen if those prisoners were to be released out of the cave? His reasoning for this was to produce what the human natures method is of gaining knowledge. Then, Niccolo Machiavelli described in The Prince why qualities are essential in succeeding as a prince. He stated that “qualities bring either blame or praise (Machiavelli). Therefore, it is significant to suppress negative qualities and let the positive…

    • 1391 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Of Plato's Allegory Of The Cave
    • 264 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Analysis Of Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

    In The Republic, the Philosopher King becomes compelled to tell his citizens medicinal lies. When the citizens do not understand something, like medicinal things, the philosopher king becomes able to tell them almost anything and they will believe everything he says, and exalt him. He is compelled to do this to ease their minds, since they would not understand anyway, he figures it is just easier to not tell them. The Philosopher King also seems to understand more than what the citizens understand. But it isn’t his nature that sets him apart from citizens like him, it is his wisdom, virtue, and knowledge that lifts him higher than everyone else, and allows his to “understand” things that the regular citizens would not. This suits him because he is so wise, he understands why the citizens do not understand what he understands, or knows.…

    • 264 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Allegory of a Cave and Matrix Comparison Essay
    • 959 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Allegory of a Cave and Matrix Comparison Essay

    When you think of the world that Alice Liddell fell into and believed to be true, you might think she was a lunatic living in an imaginary world. Yet if you really think about it, how do you know that her world isn’t genuine, and ours simply an illusion that veils our eyes from the reality? Who’s to say what’s real, and what isn’t? There are two very different, yet eerily the same stories that expand on the ideas of reality, and the truth that is found within it. One, a modern movie, called The Matrix, where a man learns that his race is being controlled by a robotic race. The human race lives in a simulated world, where they are ignorant of the world that lies outside their imprisoned minds. The other a classical essay written by Plato, called “The Allegory of the Cave.” In the essay, Plato entertains the idea, of what prisoners who are raised in a cave, where all they can know to be true is shadows on a large wall that they gaze at their entire lives. They contrast in many ways, yet over the centuries since Plato’s time, the theme of his essay still applies.…

    • 959 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Of Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave
    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Analysis Of Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

    In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, a dialogue between two men, Socrates and Glaucon, reveals that our senses are not completely reliable. Socrates tells the story of a prisoner who has been chained for his whole life, able to see only shadows cast on a wall. The prisoner believed that the shadows were reality, but when he is released and dragged out of the cave, he finds a more important, more authentic reality. Socrates arrives to the conclusion that our senses are limited, just like the prisoner’s were, and that in order to come closer to the truth, we need to enter the world of intellect.…

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Allegory In The Movie The Matrix
    • 1325 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Allegory In The Movie The Matrix

    In this movie, we are introduced to a world in which machines had imprisoned man into a virtual world called “the matrix”. There the main protagonist “Neo” founds himself living in this world in questioning whether is real or not, and manages to scape with the help of a group of survivors from the real world. Yet the real world was not what he expected, earth was devastated by a long war between man and machines, and what is left of humanity lives in an underground city were the sewers of the old world use to be. We can consider the Matrix to be the cave, and the shadows projected by the fire, it also presents two possible outcomes from finding true knowledge. In the allegory, Plato believes that if an individual manages to escape from the cave it could end up in two ways. The first way indicates that if a man manages to escape the cave, he would be overwhelmed by the light, and the actual shapes of the shadows he saw, “Don’t you think he would be puzzled, and believe what he saw before was truer than what was shown to him?”(Plato pg2) indicating that the individual who got out would have trouble believing the things from outside the cave would be real. In the movie Neo faces the same problem when he is liberated from the matrix believing that the real world was actually a dream. The second way this could end up is if the individual finds himself to overwhelm by the real world to the point that…

    • 1325 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Compare And Contrast Ishmael And The Weldt
    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Compare And Contrast Ishmael And The Weldt

    In Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, The Truman Show by Peter Weir, and “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, characters are depicted as ones attempting to escape this synthetic life inside of the cave. Through diction and action, the authors of these stories portray the good life as one dedicated to truly finding enlightenment in society.…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Plato's Allegory Of The Cave
    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

    Allegory of the Cave is a dialog between Socrates and Gloucon in The Republic written by Plato. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Socrates depicts a long, dark cave with a small opening that allows a small amount of light to enter. Inside the cave there group of prisoners, who have been in the cave for their entire lives. The prisoners legs and necks are chained to the cave floor so they are unable to move and can only look forward at the cave wall. At the back of the cave there is a fire that they are never able to view. In between the prisoners and the fire there is a low wall with a path behind it, along which people carry pictures, puppets, and statues. These pictures, puppets and statues are all the prisoners are able to see, and the echoes of the puppeteers when they speak are all they are able to hear. Although the prisoners are chained they are still content because all they have ever known are the shadows. None of them have ever seen anything beyond the cave and have no desire to do so. However one prisoner wakes up to find that he is no longer chained to the floor, and is able to leave the cave. Once the prisoner is outside he realizes that the shadows are not real. The prisoner then decides to return to the cave, to free the other prisoners, however reentering the cave would make his eyes have to…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Analysis
    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Analysis

    Plato’s Allegory of the Cave envisions the world as a dark cave, with human beings as trapped prisoners, and all of their experiences as nothing but shadows on a wall. Plato was an Ancient Greek philosopher who founded the Academy and is the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence in Western thought. Plato is informing us of the world around us, and is guiding the reader in the journey from ignorance to wisdom.…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Plato's Analogy Of The Cave
    • 260 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Plato's Analogy Of The Cave

    In Plato’s analogy of the cave he suggests that the prisoners are held back by their senses telling them that the world that they see is in fact reality, whereas Plato disagrees with this. Plato believed that once the escapee (Philosopher) is outside of the cave, that they can use the power of reason to truly know what reality is. He believes that the world around us is not real, and that the world of the forms is the true reality where we can gain knowledge and understanding.…

    • 260 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    english paper
    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages

    english paper

    To acquire knowledge of the truth beyond the cave, one prisoner is freed. As his eyes adjust to the light, he starts to see the real…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Allegory of the Cave Summary and Response
    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Allegory of the Cave Summary and Response

    “Allegory of the Cave”, written by Plato, is story that contrasts the differences between what is real and what is perceived. He opens with Glaucon talking to Socrates. He has Glaucon imagine what it would be like to be chained down in a cave, not able to see anything other than what is in front of him. He tells a story of men that were trapped in a cave and were prisoners to the truth. These prisoners have only seen shadows. But because of their ignorance, these slaves to the cave believe that the shadows are real. The story goes on to say that one of the men has been dragged out of the cave. He is not happy to see the real world, yet upset because he is being taken away from all that he knows. As he approaches the outside, he is blinded by the sunlight that he has never seen. The sunlight can be interpreted as actual sun or as knowledge, making the journey rather painful in mental and physical ways. The prisoner wants to return to his life as a peasant inside of the cave. When he is outside of the cave, he only wants to look at shadows and reflections, but later proceeds to look at actual objects surrounding him. Lastly, he looks at the sun itself, as he realizes that is what created this beautiful nature. The climax of the story is when the ma realized that he no longer has to worry about reality and reasoning, because he achieved the understanding of it. Eventually, he goes back to the cave. He is not greeted nicely back at the cave because he is seen to have taken a meaningless trip. The man who had seen the outside world took it upon himself to teach the others and lead them into understanding the truth of reality. The story finished by Socrates saying that the most qualified and wise people are the best options for leading in government, like the prisoner who discovered truth.…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Allegory of Cave & the Matrix
    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Allegory of Cave & the Matrix

    What if the world everyone perceives as a reality is only an elaborate deception? Human beings believe they are living in realities because they do not know of anything else. What they feel, see, hear, taste, and feel all contribute to their subconscious belief of physical existence. As people dream, however, they usually cannot recognize that they are not living through the events—that is, until they wake up. What if they do not wake up? How would they know the difference between their false perceptions and reality? The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato explores this concept within an example he uses in his work The Republic. In his example, known as the “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato uses an allegorical cave to show how humans are uncomfortable when exposed to the truth and that they are manipulated by higher authorities. In their 1999 motion picture The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers use a computer program to display similar ideals of Plato's allegory, including how humans are controlled and negatively react to the truth. Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” serves as a philosophical basis to The Matrix, as both works suggest that humans express discomfort while exposed to truth and both argue that people are controlled by higher authorities.…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics