Seeing Past The Limit

It has become increasingly common that peoples’ ability to perceive the real is vastly restricted because they are unable to see beyond the confines of their own limited perceptions of reality. In general, many people do not actively seek understanding and truth to the world around them, and so their perceptions of reality remains restricted for their entire lives. This fact has resulted in significant limitations to progress in society. The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski brothers, and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, portray some of the key factors that prevent society from clearly seeing the real. By the employment of the philosophical notions of varying degrees of awareness, layers of reality, and the relationship between truth and control, The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave illustrate the limiting factors of people’s perception of reality.

A major thread in both The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave is the degrees of awareness of the characters. Initially, characters in The Matrix and the Allegory are under the illusion that they are free, when in fact they are subject to the shackles of their respective domains. In the Matrix, Neo and the other people who are plugged into the Matrix are merely living inside their minds, and therefore not actually experiencing anything real. In the Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners “have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads” (1). Since the characters in both stories are initially shackled to their own finite perceptions of reality, they are unaware of a greater embodiment of existence outside of what they can see. While it appears that in The Matrix there are certain characters who have knowledge of the existence of the Matrix, the prisoners of the Allegory “have been there from their childhood” (1), and it is assumed that they have no knowledge that they are actually prisoners in a cave. In both stories, the characters’ general unawareness of the factors that greatly restrict their ability to see reality is followed by one character suddenly becoming more aware as they break away from their shackles. In the Allegory of the Cave, the liberated prisoner ventures is “compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows… that what he saw before was an illusion” (2). As the liberated prisoner suddenly becomes more aware, he is blinded by the light of reality, but he cannot turn back to see the realities of where he previously was in the shadows. When Neo wakes up after being ejected from his pod in The Matrix, he too is blinded a utters a comment about his eyes hurting. The characters in both stories become increasingly aware of what they once had no knowledge of, and they cannot venture back and see the real in the same way. They are, in a sense, enlightened to a point, and they also become aware that they are largely unaware.