Ethos Pathos And Logos In The Matrix

In the 1999 blockbuster hit The Matrix an absence of a public sphere is expressed through three different dimensions of human consciousness. Neo, otherwise known as Thomas A. Anderson has always had some type of unorthodox feeling about the world he lives in and therefore is on a hunt for a cyber-program called “the matrix.” The rising action of the story doesn’t begin until a man who goes by the name of Morpheus concludes that Neo is the ‘One’ that can save the seemingly oblivious and asleep humans from the fake world and more importantly, public sphere in which they live. Once Neo learns of the fake reality he was living in during his “fake,” life he joins a team of a hand -full of humans who broke out of the matrix to defeat the agents and
make all humans aware that artificial intelligence is running their lives. The decision Morpheus makes to be the initial man to break free from the matrix is crucial to the story. Without it the rest of the world would have lived out their lives in battery pods while the machines sucked away their own resources for fuel. As the main characters in the film fought against the agents and a desolated wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines that live off of the humans' body heat and electrochemical energy, one couldn’t help but wonder about the lack of information being passed around in the human society. As a result, only a handful of humans knowing the truth, it seemed like a public sphere of information was being kept from everyone and everything. As a result human society could not be pictured as being free and full of democracy. In fact, it seemed like the world could never really be the same due to the giant virtual reality being placed on every human being possible. Thus, the pseudo public sphere human beings actually live in is quite different from the public sphere and fake ideologies holding together a virtual world made up of nothing. Thomas A.
Anderson, also known as Neo, is the protagonist in the film who represents the key to unlocking human beings from being slaves of their own mind. Neo is the centralized figure whose main focus is to break free from the pseudo public sphere in which human beings operate in and also change the fake ideologies the human race as a whole think they founded upon. Morpheus is true leader of the group and was the first human to break free from the matrix and into the real world of artificial intelligence. With Morpheus’s mastery of the matrix system he becomes the man who is on a never ending hunt to find the supposed chosen one who can break the human race free of a pseudo public sphere and the simulated ideology running the lives of everyone. The oracle in the story represents an occurring theme throughout the movie, which deals with fate. As the film progresses Neo is constantly contemplating if fate runs his life, or a self made destiny. The oracle is the figure that symbolizes this internal conflict and therefore plays a pivotal role in the struggle between being informed, or simply having ones life planned out before an individual is born. Agent Smith is the program who was made by artificial intelligence in order to protect the privacy of the real public sphere and keep human beings believing their fake ideologies. The pseudo public sphere, or lack of information in the matrix needs to be protected from the truth in order for artificial intelligence to prosper. For this specific reason Agent Smith can be labeled as the face of the protagonist in the
film.
One of the key scenes the movie portrays is where Neo is waking up from the matrix into what is now known as the pseudo- Public Sphere. The double meaning of this scene holds great significance not only because it reveals the major conflict in the story, but also because it serves as an abstract idea expressed throughout the film. This scene reveals that artificial intelligence has overtaken the human race and now uses their unconscious bodies as a source of bioelectrical energy to fuel their world. All the while humans live in a fake reality, which is run and maintained by artificial intelligence. This reality is known as the matrix of modern human civilization as we know it exist today. The scene also represents a quite ironic false sense of knowing and being informed, known as a pseudo public sphere. Even though humans believe they live in a democratic society where information is freely passed around, in reality any type of ideology constructed by the human race in the last couple of thousand years has actually been fake. These fake ideologies are concluded by coming to the realization that humans are manipulated for their resources and kept hidden from the truth about how artificial intelligence runs the world.
Another key scene occurs during the rising action of the film, a scene where Morpheus has offered Neo the choice between being enlightened and within the public sphere of society, or becoming an uninformed citizen who lives out the rest of his life in a world full of fake ideologies and a manipulated truth. This scene which is otherwise known as ‘taking the red pill or the blue pill’ represents an important episode in the movie because Neo is offered the chance between two interpretive abstractions related to being informed or lack there of. As discussed and viewed in the film, these two choices relate to being in the public sphere or confining to the rules and ideologies that run the program of a fake human civilization.
As Neo is finally about to learn his fate from the old and wise oracle as to whether or not he is the ‘chosen one’, he comes across an adolescent monk who is seen bending a spoon with his mind. Perplexed by the events that unfolded in front of him, Neo asks the young monk how he bent the spoon. The monk expresses to Neo “Do not try and bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon.” Neo now knows everything he has ever known is just a false construct and the spoon isn’t real. His mind is simply envisioning the spoon just as human beings are envisioning a false consciousness and reality. This is exactly what the interpretive abstraction of an ideology has lead them to believe. Neo finally concludes that he is in fact now part of the real public sphere of enlightenment rather than the pseudo public sphere that proceeds around him.