Hey, my first post!
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The main character Case, does bear similarities to Neo. He's an expert at hacking and working with computers. He also feels that he doesn't belong. He deals with gangsters. Here, however, the similarities diverge. In many ways, they are alike, but in more ways, they are separate archetypal characters - Neo is painted as "The One," an actual hero come to save the human race. Case, on the other hand, is more of an archetypal antihero. He does not set out to save anyone; he agrees reluctantly to Armitage's terms, and then is acted upon against his own will (the toxin sacs). Through much of the story, he is more of a real, believable person than Neo because of his fallibility, his sweat-stained clothes, his constant chain-smoking, his beard stubble, his drug addictions. Case operates at a gutter level against an existing world that merely acknowledges his presence; Neo exists in a world beyond the gutter, and many people regard him with something approaching reverence. Case is redeemed in the end, but Neo needs no redemption, because he is portrayed as the one doing the redeeming.
In many ways, the gap between these two characters is much wider than the gap between Case and a character like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Rick Deckard. Deckard and Case operate on opposite sides of the law, but they are much more similar to each other than Case is to Neo. In fact, there may even be a comparison to make with regard to their view of the law and truth. Case operates on the wrong side of the law, but, at least at the beginning of the story, he is so drug-fried that he seems to no longer care; Armitage's "go-to" profile flatly gives Case a month to live, at most. It seems, in Gibson's words, that Case has been trying to con the street into killing him when he isn't looking. In the same way, Deckard is a disillusioned alcoholic who no longer seems to care what happens to him. And yet, they both seem to find meaning at the hands of a beautiful woman.
The remblances between Morpheus and Armitage are superficial at best. Morpheus has a past , and emotions. He feels pain both emotional and physical. Armitage is incapable of any true strong emotions, because he's literally not a real person. It's only when the Armitage construct begins to break down and Colonel Corto begins to leak through that he shows any sign of humanity. True, they dress similarly, but though there is much more to Morpheus than the way he dresses, so too there is much *less* than that to Armitage.
The contention that Neuromancer contains violence is true in one sense - there are characters with guns, there are street thugs, prostitutes and pimps; there is a general criminal element, which, especially in Night City, is characterized by violence. And yet, it is not violent in the same way that The Matrix is, because there is a fundamental difference in the relationships between the characters and the matrix. To Case, the matrix is a separate reality - one that he loves and is addicted to, to be sure, but one that he is generally easily able to separate from his own waking life. It's only when Wintermute reveals himself in the form of Julius Deane that the matrix takes on the tang of realism that pervades its every aspect in the movie. But Neo begins the movie not even knowing what is real and what isn't - knowing that the matrix exists somewhere, but not even remotely suspecting its whereabouts or its nature. For the most part, Neuromancer concerns itself more with relationships in terms of love, friendship, and betrayal, where the movie tips its hat briefly to the idea that Trinity may be in love with Neo, yet for the most part, concerns itself with the battle, the revolution, the struggle to come between man and machine. There is little of that conflict in the novel, even when Case suspects his motives may be at odds with Wintermute's; Wintermute is like a patient priest attending a penitent, possibly sad that Case is not yet repentant, but more than willing to keep trying. The movie's externalizaion of the matrix, Agent Smith and his cronies, are uniformly hostile to the character, whereas Wintermute takes steps to try and protect Molly and Case. Of course, it could be argued that it does these things in it's own self-interest; it certainly doesn't care enough about Armitage to feel regret over his demise, or guilt over what it perpetrated on Corto.
The assertion that "a character named Finn helps them and he goes on to know so much about the system that they call him "'The Oracle'" is factually incorrect. I own an Adobe Acrobat version of the novel, and a quick search through the file is sufficient to ensure that not only does no-one ever refer to the Finn as "the Oracle," but, in fact, the word "Oracle" never even occurs in the text. But more than that, it seems unlikely that anyone ever *would*. After all, the Finn constitutes little more than a technologically savvy gofer. If he knew so much about the system, he would be a cowboy, like Case. The same can be said about the assertion that users of the matrix in the novel have to strap themselves into their chairs to avoid moving around too much. While this may have been true in the movie, there is much in the novel that actually runs contrary to this. Page 58:
"Armitage seemed to think that zero-g would affect Case’s ability to operate in the matrix. ‘Don’t sweat it,’ Case argued, ‘I jack in and I’m not here. It’s all the same.’
‘Your adrenaline levels are higher,’ Armitage said. ‘You’ve still got SAS. You won’t have time for it to wear off. You’re going to learn to work with it.’
‘So I do the run from here?’
‘No. Practice, Case. Now. Up in the corridor...’
Cyberspace, as the deck presented it, had no particular relationship with the deck’s physical whereabouts..."
There is also a subtle distinction between the kind of death experienced by users of the matrix in the movie versus the characters in the novel. It is the movie's contention that when a user experiences death as a part of his experience in the matrix, in the words of Morpheus, "The body cannot live without the mind" - and therefore the user's body would die as a result. Setting aside the fact that this is a gross misprepresentation of medical science - the body *can*, in fact, live without the mind - consider the difference between the two states. In the novel, the user is projected as consciousness. Page 2:
"...projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix."
The braindeaths that occur as a result of the user's projection into cyberspace do not happen as a result of them being "killed" in the matrix. In fact, there is no explanation for why this occurs, in contrast with the explanation given by Morpheus above.
* <<Maelcum is a big, "all natural" rastafarian that wouldn't enter the matrix -- much like Tank and Dozer.>>
There is no reference to any of the Rastafarians being "all-natural" in the novel. Besides that, Tank and Dozer *couldn't* enter the matrix because they didn't have the ports to jack in on the backs of their heads. It's Aerol that wouldn't enter the matrix, not Maelcum, and Aerol's logic for not entering the matrix is entirely different. In the Rastafarian religion, Babylon refers to an oppressive power structure - Aerol's reaction to the matrix highlights his desire to separate himself from the society that his religious order has rejected.
* At times in the novel, Case heart stops when he’s in The Matrix, but he is still alive!
The whole point of these incidents is to point out that he is *not* alive when it happens. His EEG goes flat, meaning he dies braindeath. The significance of these incidents is to show that he has surpassed McCoy Pauley in ability and skill: page 96:
"‘You tryin’ to break my record, son?’ the Flatline asked. ‘You were braindead again, five seconds.’
* In one of Case’s dreams, he dreams of destroying a factory of babies, grown in tubes inside the Tessier-Ashpool (his enemy) factory. Is that like the humans grown in the vats, plugged into the Matrix?
There is no such dream in the book. He does dream of destroying a wasp's nest, but the significance of the dream serves more to highlight the difference between Neuromancer and Wintermute and the "hive mind" nature of Wintermute. Page 147:
"Wintermute was hive mind, decision maker, effecting change in the world outside. Neuromancer was personality. Neuromancer was immortality."
* Maelcum refers to Dixie as “the ghost.” Possible inspiration for Ghost?
No. More likely this is a reference to the classical "ghost in the machine."
There are a lot of other comparisons that are made between the two stories which are, I'm afraid, merely coincidences. While it's true that the movie owes a great debt to Gibson's work, that fact alone can be blamed for these coincidences - but there seems to be little or no symbolic significance to most of them.
tiger
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and used by the main character of the book as a guide). >>
