The Matrix

This past summer, I spent about 2 months in Greece studying abroad and visiting family. During that time, I visited Delphi and then went back on 2 other occasions, since it is such an amazing site. Most importantly, and relevantly to this post, Delphi is the home to one of the most prolific and famous oracular temples of ancient times. During our post-movie discussion, it was brought up about how the oracle in The Matrix said that neo was not "The One". For anyone informed about oracular tradition though, it should not be strange that this was the fortune that Neo received. By nature of their duties, oracles needed to deliver cryptic and semi-ambiguous prophecies in order to be correct. If they weren't correct, people would stop patronizing that oracle and the temple would lose support and the gifts that happy patrons would bestow upon them. While those motives may not have been absolutely the same in The Matrix as they were in the ancient world, it is just going to show that the oracle from the movie was just acting as its ancient counterpart would, giving a prophecy that could be construed in any number of ways but would still hold to be valid no matter the result. This can be seen in the prophecy that Neo receives, as well as the one Trinity talks about. It can be argued that Neo did die, only to be instantly resurrected as "The One". In the case of Trinity, if Neo had died, it could just be said that she thought she loved him and that he'd be the one she would be with forever, when in reality what she was feeling really wasn't love and "The One" was still coming. In both of these cases, no matter the result, the Oracle would still be able to argue that the prophecy she gave was accurate.