»Don't Worry About The Vase«

While writing a paper for english class on symbols in The Matrix, I have stumbled upon this site. The movie has always puzzled me, with its half answered questions and its odd refrences to things that otherwise make no sence being there.

I feel like I have just taken the Red Pill. I now know how unfathomly deep the rabbit hole goes.

What my original paper would be on was on one scene in the first Matrx- when he first meets the Oracle. This part, to be exact:

ORACLE
I'd ask you to sit down, but
you're not going to anyway. And
don't worry about the vase.

NEO
What vase?

He turns to look around and his elbow knocks a VASE from
the table. It BREAKS against the linoleum floor.

ORACLE
That vase.

NEO
Shit, I'm sorry.

ORACLE
I said don't worry about it. I'll
get one of my kids to fix it.

NEO
How did you know...?

ORACLE
What's really going to bake your
noodle later on is, would you
still have broken it if I hadn't
said anything.

Well, now I'm not so sure. The essay would be on the question how people can control your fate for you by simply telling you something offhand.

Now I don't know if there is something more to that. It seems.. like what I was thinking wasn't the whole of it.

Help?

She told him he'd break the vase, he id. SHe told him he wasn't the One, hew as. Howver, if she had told him he was, he wouldn't of been in the position to sacrifice himself for Morpheus. The Oracle is a complicated one...

The Oracle tells people what they need to hear in oder to make them go into a certain direction.

The scene you've mentioned is so rich in content, you could easily write an entire book about that. Of course I can't do that here, but you are on the right track. This scene is about control and manipulation vs. freedom and choice.