Essay on Examining Reality

A&P is described to be, “...five miles from a beach...but we’re right in the middle of town...north of Boston…” (Updike 19). Sammy’s description of the A&P present the setting as an ugly and boring place to be in. The fluorescent light is as cool as the “checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor”(Updike 19). The everyday grocery shoppers move in the same direction except for the girls in the swim suits, for they move against everyone else, and everything is organized into perfection along the tidy aisles. This degrading routine in this establishment is implied by Sammy’s careless reference to the usual shoppers as “sheep,” “houseslaves,” and “pigs” (Updike 18). These frequent customers seem to walk the store in oblivion to everything else around them; as Sammy points out, “I bet you could set off dynamite in an A&P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists…” (Updike 18).

The short stories, written by both authors Plato and Descartes; The Matrix, The Allegory of the Cave, and Meditations on First Philosophy, focuses on what individuals believe to be reality or not within the world. The stories bring on questions of what is in fact illusion. Overall, the stories provide a guide to the truth. According to Wachowski, A, & Wachowski, L (1999) in the Matrix, Mr. Anderson questions everything in the world as he knows it. He wonders if what he is involved in a computer program instead of the life as he knows it. The computer program could be controlling human beings, such as himself. Morpheus convinces Mr. Anderson that the world that he knows is an illusion and a system of deception (Wachowski, A, & Wachowski, L,

The Allegory of the Cave, by Plato and The Matrix have similarities and differences when compared. These two story lines are completely different scenarios, but they both paint the same picture leading you to the question what is real?

There are a number of similarities found in certain sections of Plato's The Republic, Renee Descartes' Meditations I, and the 1999 major motion picture The Matrix. The basic tenet that fuels Socrates' Allegory of the Cave and the other two previously mentioned works is that reality through the human senses cannot be trusted, may not be true, and cannot necessarily be validated through the human senses.

Conversely, differences also exist between the plots of The Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix. While both the men in the allegory and Neo live from birth in their seclusion, The Matrix differs slightly from the allegory, as Neo has a feeling that the matrix exists, and actively tries to discover what the matrix is, while the men in the cave do not try, or even think to try to escape their bondage. Additionally, when Morpheus frees Neo from the matrix Neo has the option to stay ignorant, however he choses knowledge for himself by taking the red pill that allows Morpheus to show him “how deep the rabbit hole goes” (The Matrix). In contrast, the man in Plato’s Allegory stands freed by his captors, and is forced into the light. Finally, when Neo returns to the matrix after his enlightenment, he understands the matrix better than he did before his enlightenment. On the contrary, in the allegory the man returning to the cave from the light does not understand the shadows any longer, and the men who never left the cave mock the enlightened man

Imagine living through life completely bound and facing a reality that doesn’t even exist. The prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” are blind from true reality as well as the people in the movie “The Matrix” written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. They are given false images and they accept what their senses are telling them, and they believe what they are experiencing is all that really exists. Plato the ancient Greek philosopher wrote “The Allegory of the Cave”, to explain the process of enlightenment and what true reality may be. In the movie “The Matrix”, Neo (the main character) was born into a world of illusions called the matrix. His true reality is being controlled by the puppet- handlers called the machines who

After the early 21st century, humans built these machines, which are now held in a nuclear-winter-like setting. Being deprived of sunlight as an energy source, they have enslaved the human race and are farming people as a source of bioelectrical energy. The humans are kept in an unconscious state in podlike containers in a vast holding field, plugged in to a central computer. In the scenario of The Matrix, everything in the world; cars, buildings, cities, and countries are part of a complex computer-generated virtual reality, which within the humans interact. Everything they see, smell and hear is part of this virtual construct and does not really exist. A computer merely stimulates their brains and deceives them into believing that they are all living normal 20th-century lives, eating sleeping, working and interacting together. They are all blinded to the truth about how and why they exist. After a handful of people have escaped from the nightmarish world of the Matrix, they find out the truth and reach out to those still consumed with the falsities of this world. One of these, a man named Morpheus, hacks into the Matrix and contacts Neo, telling him,

Both Plato’s Cave Allegory and the matrix discuss the topic of truth and illusion. In both of the story it was established that we humans live in the darkness, an illusion which is merely the shadow of the truth. However, once in a while a person will wake up from the illusory dream and realized the cold hard truth of reality. Should that person overjoyed of the fact that he or she discovered the truth or should that person weep in sorrow since he or she can no longer go back and continuing living in the shadow? In both Plat’s Cave Allegory and the matrix those who were thrown out of their illusions into the cold hard truth end up having to deal with the consequence that comes from realizing it. Whether it is becoming a social outcast,

At the beginning of “Good People,” the tones are gloomy and dreary when the reflection of the sunlight on the water shallow is dark. Yet, the darkness of the water shallow does not last long when Lane notices “part of the lake further out flashed with sun ̶ ̶ the water up close wasn’t black now,” (Wallace 257). It is at this moment, which readers can tell the tone of the story becomes calm because the angle of the sun no longer causes the water of the shallow looks dark. This setting also symbolizes Lane has a clearer mind than before because he understands no matter what decisions he makes, a consequence will always follow. Meanwhile, the tone in “A&P” is not calm, but informal. It is informal because Sammy dehumanizes the customers in A&P and refers them to sheep. He said, “the customers had been showing up with their carts, but, you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie,” (Updike 166). Sammy thinks the customers are like sheep because they blindly walk through the aisles and just follow what others are doing. They do not want to take a step forward and leave their confront zones. Therefore, Sammy thinks the sheep is a good representation of the customers. By drawing an analogy between the A&P supermarket and a farm with sleep, the author has created an informal tone and that is different from “Good

In real life, the cave symbolizes an individual 's community. These prisoners have no other experience, besides what they see and know from their own experience, which is very similar to individuals who stay in their own communities and never venture beyond to see what else is out in the world. From this, a person will always feel “confident about personal experience” , however “unfortunately this confidence can cause us to attach greater significance and universality to particular events than they deserve” (Ruggiero 73). Just like the prisoners, people rely heavily on their own personal experience to be the source of knowledge for what is around. However, similar to the prisoners, there is no guarantee that what is being seen is the truth of the human experience. This is because humans “engage in a complex process which draws on the behavior, knowledge, and skills...of the world we live in” (Baud & Miller). This idea further exemplifies how the mind is only aware of what it is exposed it to due to the unique personal experience. Plato successfully demonstrates the awareness of the mind with human experiences through the metaphor of a cave in Allegory of the Cave.

The Wachowski Brother’s film, The Matrix, and “The Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic are both centered on the concept of how reality is perceived. In both works, there is someone who is trapped in a false reality but then comes to know true reality. In Neo’s case, he was escaping from a computer generated reality, while in Plato’s work, the prisoner was escaping from inside a cave. Both works share the common theme of the acceptance of actual reality in order to know truth.

The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both show us how to perceive our own reality and to distinguish between what is real and what is not real and how the people living in the Matrix world are

Within this story there are prisoners within a cave and puppeteers in control of them construct the prisoners’ realities thus giving them a false mindset. Afterwards, their minds begin to respond to the external stimuli and create from its imaginative forces a separate falsified consciousness: “By every measure, then, reality for the prisoners would be nothing but shadows cast by artifacts” (Plato, 210). The prisoners’ minds create what they undoubtedly believe to be real, yet this poses as a problem when they are actually exposed to the real world outside the cave. They become dissatisfied with the outside world and return to their unreal past lifestyle. Their brain creates the problem for them and they have no escape unless they force themselves to accept the world outside of the cave. Though that is only if their brain is willing to deal with the harshness of the sudden change. Ultimately, The Allegory of the Cave poses as a very accurate representation of the power our brain has to create problems and solve them. It is a fundamental philosophy that almost all beliefs can be traced back to so it is not surprising that there are striking similarities in terms of the plethora of positive and negative effects the mind can

Historically, humanity has been obsessed with discovering the nature of reality. Every person eventually develops their own worldview based on their beliefs, morals, and experiences. At one point in their lives, many people undergo a radical change in perception that forces them to change this view, eventually adopting a new perception of reality. Such a transformation occurs once one starts to question the fundamental nature of one’s own existence and that of the world around them. This realization begins with the disillusionment with one’s environment, continues with the questioning of one’s life’s worth, and concludes with the acceptance of a new worldview.

The brain is a crucible: a melting pot of intersecting ingredients that forges a reality that is deceptively the same, but often vastly different for each individual. That reality is a construct is a fashionable term these days; it means that we tend to see reality from a particular frame of reference. There is always a context, whether it be political, social or cultural. For those who are unable to construct a satisfactory reality, it is then that they are forced to create an alternative reality, perhaps that fulfils their dreams and meets their views and values.