The Matrix is a retelling of the story of Socrates seen in Neo's and Socrates' questions and missions, the oracle in each story, the allegory of the cave, and the ideas of knowledge and reality.

Neo and Socrates missions are extremely similar. Both needed to get people to notice the world and see what was untrue. Neo had to tell the world of their enslavement to machines while Socrates also had to get people to see the truth, more specifically to wake them up. Both have questions asking for truth and reality. Neo asks what the Matrix is while Socrates asks what the good life is. And because they both want to wake others up to ask questions they were both accused of breaking laws: Socrates for corrupting the youth and Neo for committing “cyber crime[s].”

The oracles in each story are similar. Both don't like the idea that their life is fated, yet they find out that it isn't fate that the oracle is telling them but who they really are. Socrates finds that he is the smartest person in Athens just as the oracle of Delphi told him by searching himself and finding that because he realized his own absolute ignorance he was the wisest man it Athens. Similarly, by examining himself and finding who he is, Neo sees that he is the one just as the oracle told him. Both oracles tell the hero to “know thyself,” the true order and necessity, even more than listening to the oracle. Just as Socrates always said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Both stories show an example of Plato's allegory of the cave. Socrates is pulled out of darkness and ignorance through questioning the importance of life. He forces himself to see reality as it is and then proceeds to help the others in Athens to see their ignorance. Similarly Neo is pulled out of the Matrix, an unreality where everyone sees untruth shown in their minds by machines. Morpheus pulls Neo out and forces him to gradually see the world as it is, with his own eyes. As a result of his new knowledge and training, Neo returns to the Matrix and attempts to help the rest of humanity just as Socrates did in Athens.

For Socrates and Neo, the world as ti appears is not reality. Socrates strove through reasoning to see life and reality as it was, without having to resort in shadows and the false images of the world around him. Neo also searches for reality, knowing that the Matrix is playing with him and making him sense unrealities. Neo finds that in the true reality the world doesn't exist, it is just made up from the Matrix. “There is no spoon.” Both try to find the truth and reality they know exists in the world.