Allegory

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave can be compared to the Hollywood film, The Matrix.  Both stories involve two unseen or unknown worlds.   The character in the Matrix is introduced into the actual world, not the one he had been living in.  The main character in The Cave was introduced to the world outside the cave.  Both characters learned of a new world that they had never known.  Both stories deal with ‘the real world’.  There are some differences between the two stories however.  In The Cave, the character is released into the outside world to discover how much it has changed and sees all of the fascinating new things.  His friends who have not seen any of it cannot comprehend what he is telling them about the good world outside.  In The Matrix the character is living in a world that is better than the real world.  The ‘real’ world has been destroyed and the character is hit with a hard realization of this destroyed world.  There are many lessons to be learned from these stories.  Just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  Very often we ignore or disregard unseen problems until we actually see them for ourselves.  Sometimes we also don’t believe others or believe in things because we can’t understand them.  Just because we can’t comprehend certain things, does not mean they don’t exist.  I think the Matrix symbolizes a place to hide from reality if we do not lie something, kind of avoiding a problem.  I think the cave symbolizes a place of ignorance.  Outside of the cave are things that we could never have imagined, but in the cave we choose not to believe them.