Introduction using The Island(movie) and The Matrix(movie) theories

Whether forced exile or chosen isolation, people need to be a part of society and will fight for that right. In the movie The Island, an entire community is exiled from their country and is completely oblivious to this fact. In The Matrix, individuals isolate themselves from mainstream society when they discover what the Matrix really is; creating an underground society apart from the Matrix.

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Webster defines the word exile as

“the state or period of forced absence from one’s home or country”

In The Island, people are being raised and used for body parts. In The Matrix, people are being raised and used as batteries. In both movies most people are content with their lives, others are not. A handful of people feel that something is not right with the world, something is off and they do not know what it is.

Searching for answers, asking questions, this handful finds themselves isolated or exiled from those around them.

Every now and then people fight back, revolting against that which they do not trust, trying to free themselves from their current situation, only to find themselves caught in another. While occasional revolution is a healthy thing, human beings ultimately find ourselves moving from one situation, island or matrix to another. Perhaps it is human nature to do so.

The word isolation is defined as

“an individual socially withdrawn or removed from society."

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Explanation of an Island-like Isolation

In The Island, Lincoln feels as Neo does- something is not right with the world around him. He wakes up abruptly one day after having had a bad dream. Lincoln is on a boat headed for the Island, he is attacked and drowns. In his perfect world bad dreams are most uncommon; this heightens his sense that something is awry. Getting dressed he discovers that he is missing a left shoe, another uncommon event in his world. He requests a replacement, perhaps in a different color, another anomaly, as everyone wears the same colored clothing-white for the residents and black for the employees, guards, doctors and technicians. This phenomenon is a bit grating to him. Why white and black only?

As he goes through his day, he notices other little things that are a bit “off.”

A technician, who lives in a different sector talks of things Lincoln has never heard of, God for instance. Lincoln discovers, captures and observes a moth; something that should be extinct. He is baffled by this moth because the residents were told of a great holocaust that poisoned the world, killing most all life. The residents were told of an island that miraculously survived the toxicity of the rest of the world. To gain access to this Island, a lottery system was implemented, with winners promised a trip to the Island. There they could be outside and breathe fresh air.

Lincoln begins to distrust the way the lottery is played out.

His curiosity peeked, he stumbles across a fellow resident who won the lottery and is headed to the Island. Through his investigation, he discovers that the Island is a hospital, that his society is a society of clones (“insurance policies“), referred to as products. The lottery winners are sent to an operating room and their organs are harvested.

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His life, his whole existence, is a lie.

Lincoln and everyone he knows are products being kept alive for their “organs.” Clones are made to live below ground, are brainwashed and controlled via everything around them-food, media, books, elimination of sex drive. Lincoln also learns that “sponsors” are the donors providing the DNA necessary for the production of this clone society and that the sponsors are unaware that their clones are alive, fully functioning beings. With the help of friends, Lincoln sets out to expose the truth to the sponsors.

Both the Island and the Matrix are ruses.

In The Island, people are cloned for replacement organs, in The Matrix people are grown as a power source. We need each other if we are going to survive. No man is an island. Both Neo and Lincoln had bad dreams, saw things around them that did not quite add up and had the courage to investigate until they found the truth. Once the truth was known, both Neo and Lincoln made it their mission to educate their societies, to bring all out of their exile and isolation, believing the truth is what matters most.