The Matrix: At the Source, or Where It All Began

This chapter discusses The Matrix in detail, going back to where it all began. We start with Neo (Keanu Reeves), the man at the heart of the movie, who eventually becomes “The One,” a super-powerful man with the ability to use the Matrix’s lack of reality against itself. His journey mimics that of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The exploration will continue with ideas about identity and authenticity. Who is Neo? In the world of the Matrix, he is Thomas A. Anderson, and outside the Matrix he is Neo, and where between the two of these does identity lie? The chapter will address the paired ideas of body modification and body dysmorphia. Finally, it will discuss the cyborgification of the characters with respect to what technology was available in the 1990s, and how the integration of mechanized and computerized technology into the body relates to disability and the way the disabled function in society.