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Quote 2

Morpheus:   “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
–The Matrix

Neo meets the enigmatic and imposing Morpheus for the first time in an empty room in an abandoned building in the Matrix, when he still has no idea what’s happening to him. With little time available, Morpheus gives Neo the famous choice between the red and blue pills. The blue pill will let Neo keep control over his story, but his story will have no basis in truth. The red pill will throw Neo headlong into a world he has no basis for understanding. Neo takes the red pill, of course, setting the trilogy in motion, and this moment with Morpheus marks a clear before and after in both the film and Neo’s life. Nothing, after this decision, will ever be the same.

The “wonderland” and “rabbit hole” references come from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. At the beginning of the story, young Alice follows a white rabbit into a deep rabbit hole. By entering the rabbit hole, she leaves the real world behind and enters a strange new world where the usual physical laws don’t apply. In this new world, for example, she can change the size of her body, from abnormally big to unusually small. During her adventure she bends and breaks the rules of reality just as Neo will when he enters the Matrix. The rabbit hole for Alice, like the mirror for Neo, marks the transition from one world to the next.

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