Classical “Analogies” of Plato in the Film “The Matrix”

Plato was a sharp man who knew very well how to use analogies to explain his points. For example, the allegory of the cave was an analogy that he used to illustrate his ideas to his students. He was talking of men who have been chained for quite some time in prison, and all they knew for the rest of their lives was prison life.

They could see shadows of men moving but could not actually see who they were as they kept looking at the wall. One day one man freed himself and saw the real world. This is the time he realized that he had been living in illusions and the shadows were not real. He went back to the other prisoners to tell them what he had seen. They could not believe his story, and surprisingly enough, they even got angry at him, accusing him of being crazy.

Plato uses this allegory to differentiate the world of forms from the objective world. He used shadows to represent the objects in the physical world. The escaped prisoner, according to Plato, represents an enlightened person and was trying to show how reason can liberate one from the prison of stereotypes and dogmatism.

Many people are like those prisoners who never look beyond the horizon, and they cannot even draw a line between reality and perceptions. The other analogy is of people in a prison where people have been locked up since their childhood. Unseen forces and efforts are made to manipulate the reality of these people and remain satisfied. These illusions affect their characters such that even if they are set in a free world, they cannot accept the reality of the world as their minds are already pre-set with what their senses provided to them. Though if this prisoner is made to see the relationship between the real world and fantasy, then the situation would be totally different. This is what is termed by Plato as “The Matrix.” It is all about Neo, who was released and made to face the real world.