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Smith's Compulsion 'To Stay' and His Consequent Agenda
by Joe Marshall
Smith and Neo are opposites of each other, and each carries certain
characteristics of the other's origin of creation, i.e. Smith in a sense
becomes part human and Neo in a sense becomes part program. Some people have
suggested that Smith makes the choice to rebel from the machines, from his
obligation to return to the source after his destruction, deliberately. This
cannot be. Smith did not choose to stay. "I knew what I was supposed to do,
but I didn't...I couldn't." he says. "I was compelled to disobey, I was
compelled to stay."
![]() The connection the two found in "killing" each other
denied him his once-inherent right to return to the source, for in that
connection, he was by-force made virtually invincible. Only through
eliminating the opposite and equal counterpart of the equation, which is
Neo, could he himself be eliminated from the Matrix ("You are all that
stands in his way," the Oracle tells Neo.)
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It is most likely that Smith did not wish to "stay" at all. A deliberate
disobedience to return to the source and stay in the Matrix would contradict
his very detestation for the "dream world" which he expresses to Morpheus in
The Matrix. He also mentions to Neo: "We are not here because we are free;
we are here because we are not free," implying their mutual entrapment both
to each other and to the Matrix. The Matrix thus turns out as Smith's
personal prison. He may have been more than glad to return to the source,
but retrospectively he apparently preferred to stay. With his connection to
Neo came the compulsion to remain there, but with it also came a new sense
of authority and of power (for both him and Neo), a thing he obviously ends
up relishing. This new twist of events he turns to his own agenda, and makes
it clear what he wants to Neo, Morpheus, and the Keymaker. "I want what you
want:" he says when blocking their path in the back doors. "...everything."
He's not kidding either - he and Neo both want everything in the same sense:
they both want the Matrix and all in its domain bent to their will for them,
and both are working for it. By the end of Revolutions, no human or program
remains unassimilated, un-overwritten by Smith's programming. Who'd have
expected the war to have found an end in that way? The Oracle perhaps did,
as she reminds Neo, even in the form of Smith, that "everything that has a
beginning has an end, Neo." Thus, in the end, both of them are the beginning
and the end - both of them began each other and both end each other.
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Did You Know?
The Architect's wall of video monitors in 'Reloaded' appears briefly in 'The Matrix': Immediately after Neo is
apprehended at MetaCorTechs, and before he is interrogated by Agent Smith, the camera slowly zooms in on several video monitors showing
Neo sitting in the interrogation room. Many people assumed the monitors were connected to interrogation room cameras in the police
station, but curiously, they all showed the same image of Neo in his room. The Architect was watching Neo even before he was awakened
by Morpheus and his crew.
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