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Trinity is 'half of (the) one' (the other half being Neo).
I'll try and keep my argument in a logical order but it won't
follow the exact same order as the film in some places.
Trinity takes extra shifts to watch Neo. The very first scene is
where Cypher answers the call from Trinity and says "you
weren't supposed to relieve me", realising he has put her in
danger, he has set her up for ambush although he intended
someone else to be the target (Morpheus). When Trinity runs
from the Agents she exhibits more than anyone the potential of
the Matrix as she flies through the air aiming for a tiny window.
The Agent doesn't follow her and she makes herself carry
on.
The first time that Trinity and Neo meet she warns him that the
Agents are watching him. She is guarding him. When Neo chooses
not to save himself the next day and is taken away by Agents
Trinity was there waiting to save him, to whisk him away on the
modern equivalent of a white horse, the big motorbike.
When Neo meets them it is Trinity who de-bugs him, who 'goes
in' as she would go in to mend a broken computer system.
And finally Trinity saves his life three times (Trinity does mean
three after all): she pulls him down to safety when they are
escaping in the walls; she shoots an Agent at close range on the
roof; and she saves both Neo and Morpheus by flying a helicopter
that is about to crash.
OK, so all this proves she has watched him, she has guarded him,
and she is generally looking after him. It doesn't yet show that
she is actually one half of 'the one'.
When they first meet Neo admits that he thought Trinity would
be a guy: "Trinity. The Trinity? That cracked the IRS dbase?
Jesus… [she says "what?"] I just thought um... you were a guy".
Trinity replies drily: "Most guys do".
But don't most guys think a guy will be 'the one' as well? So this
is an assumption that could be waaay wrong (and Morpheus is a
guy so may be expecting 'the one' to be a guy again).
There are several things said by the Oracle which indicate that
Trinity and Neo are two halves of 'the one':
She tells Neo that he is not 'the one'. She says he is waiting for
something. This can be read that he is waiting for Trinity's power
to start up his own power (think of it as some kind of cosmic
jump start).
The Oracle had told Morpheus that he would find 'the one'. The
first time Trinity approached Neo she told him that Morpheus
found her. He found her although she had been looking for him.
And he found Neo as well. But the Oracle cheerily tells Neo that
he is not 'the one' and says of Morpheus "no-one, not you, not
even me can convince him otherwise". Morpheus, the mentor,
teacher and father-figure to both Trinity and Neo found them
both. So perhaps he was interpreting only half of his destiny.
Without him neither of them would have found the other so
neither would have any power.
The Oracle told Trinity that she would fall in love with a man and
that man would be 'the one'. I think this is true because Neo is
half of 'the one' in this argument. But I also think there may be a
rather old-fashioned double meaning here: that Trinity would
find 'the one' for her, as in her soulmate.
Neo cannot begin to realise he is 'the one' until he begins to
realise his love for Trinity. When the helicopter is crashing he
murmurs "Trinity" and this spurs him to his first 'one'-ish action
when he pulls her from the crash. But there must be some kind of
psychic connection between them: how else could she have
known that he would save her.
Trinity seems to acknowledge her own part of the power when
she insists on going back into the Matrix with Neo to save
Morpheus. She says "if you are really serious about saving him
you are going to need my help".
Without her power Neo would remain dead in the corridor, shot
repeatedly at close range by Agent Smith. But she gives him the
power to rise from the dead. I don't like that gloopy love scene
at the end but it does show the extent of their shared power and
the strength of the connection between them.
This reading of The Matrix can be seen to be problematic in that
the source of Trinity's power is her love for a man rather than
her own force – nothing is more trad or more feminine (feminine
in a Barbara Cartland way rather than a kick-butt way). BUT I
think their meeting and falling in love (although tiresomely
traditional!) is actually the catalyst for their own changes, the
realisation of their shared power, that each is half of one.
We don't have to accept the endings we are given any more.
There are websites, products, fan fiction so in many ways there
is no formal ending to our relationship with any film, any book –
any story at all. (Does anyone really believe that Cinderella
stayed with the prince? Nah, he had an affair with one of her
sisters and she left him after a few years. Later she ran her own
very successful chain of shoe shops.) There is also our own
political (with a small 'p') will to read against the grain of the
film, to read the film however we choose. This film was
marketed as a Keanu Reeves film (and he was lookin' like a sexy
dude, no doubt), a vehicle for a male actor as the main
protagonist. But I choose to read The Matrix as a film about two
halves of one power: male and female.
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