In  “The Allegory of the Cave”, Plato describes a society in which they are situated in a dark cave. In this cave, there are two types of people: the chained people and the ones holding them captive. The chained people are chained to chairs from an early age, and they sit in a row with their backs on the cave’s entrance. This gives them a very constricted view of the cave, and they perceive what they see as reality. However, it is because of this limitation of views that leads to their false perception of the world. The captors in the cave manipulate these chained people by flashing an object in front of a fire, which creates a shadow, in front of the chained people.

The chained people cannot turn around to see because “they are fixed, seeing only in front of them…”, and they only see the truth as shadows of the objects. In “The Matrix”, the humans are trapped within the matrix, and thus can only see what the machines want them to see. The matrix can be seen as the cave and the machines as the captors. The humans are put in a virtual world, in which they believe everything they see to be real. However, it is because of this limited view they possess, that ultimately leads them to be “chained” to the Matrix, and only living in the shadows created by the computers.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the motion picture called “The Matrix” both explore the ways in which a society might be ‘chained’ by their own misperceptions of reality.  In Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, the prisoners were literally chained, hindered from viewing past the wall that would have revealed those who were really producing the shadows.  The prisoners in their ignorance mistook the shadows for reality.

The dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, Socrates mentions that, to the prisoners, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.” It is seeing beyond the shadows, or the rest of the cave, that the prisoners are able to expand their minds.  Similar to the shadows in the cave, the virtual world established by the computer in “The Matrix,” also represents illusions, which the society accepts as reality. In this world the humans don’t see that the real world is an unpleasant one, where people are used as “batteries.” These humans are also ‘bound’ in isolated pods, feeding the computer and thus sustaining their own world of illusions.

We, as the objective viewers, can see all the truths and how this society has been limited.  Though these are but fictional accounts of ideas, are we so sure that we are not bound, living in an illusion?