One of the most important allegories written by Plato was, “Allegory of the Cave”. In his writing “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato effectively describes his beliefs of the way in which he views the world by comparing the world through a strange cave (FYR: 5, FYR: 6). The philosophical writing “Allegory of the Cave” is a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Glaucon (FYR: 5). Plato begins his writing by giving us readers a description of the cave in the cave world. We are introduced to” human beings” who have been in this dark underground den since their “early childhood”, and have had their “legs and necks chained” ever since, preventing them from any kind of movement at all (FYR: 6).
1a) As Morpheus says: “When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth. As long as the Matrix exists the human race will never be free” (Matrix 6). The prisoners of the cave are trapped inside the cave. They don’t know about “real world” that is outside.
Plato’s Cave Plato believed in the idea of a cave where prisoners were kept and shown images on a wall by fire and people holding up objects. The images that were projected was the only thing the prisoners knew existed. The people holding up the objects control what the prisoners see and what they know. This is the same in the movie Dear Frankie. Frankie is the prisoner being showed the images and his mother is the person holding the objects.
THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE The following is an excerpt from Plato’s dialogue called “The Republic.” In this section of the dialogue called the “Allegory of the Cave,” Socrates creates an allegory to help illustrate his theory of knowledge. “Now then,” Socrates said, “let me tell you a story about ignorance and education which will explain the condition of man’s nature. Imagine that there is an underground cave with a long entrance open to the light. In this cave men have been chained from birth, fettered by the neck and legs so they cannot move. They cannot turn their heads around; they can only look forward at the wall of the cave.
Plato used this analogy to help his less educated contemporaries at the time understand why the physical world of sense is nothing but an illusion and that the intelligible realm is where the truth can be found. In the analogy Plato presents human beings living in a cave, which represents humans inhabiting the sensible realm. In the cave, prisoners are chained up by their necks and legs and are therefore unable to turn around. Since they have been chained up this way for their entire lives they have no experience of life outside the cave. Behind the prisoners is a low wall, a walkway and a large fire that lights up the cave.
Allegory of the Cave The Allegory of the Cave can be decoded in many different ways. It says that people are chained to the wall of a cave and they have nothing to look at but shadows on the wall that are provided by another. This is all that they know and have never been out of the cave. That tells nothing on the surface, but once one looks really hard a few messages or meanings can be interpreted from the Allegory. The main point of the Allegory of the Cave is to give an example of the way that we all live our lives.
It is difficult to imagine what Plato meant by the “Form” of something so he created the “Analogy of the Cave”. The analogy begins in the cave. It represents the physical world that we live in. Inside the cave, three prisoners, facing a blank wall, are bound by their necks, arms and legs to stop them turning around. This is the only life they have ever known.
There are human beings in a dark cave, bound by chains and facing the wall; they see only shadows of themselves and the shadows that are shown to them by other human beings behind them. They have been there since birth, so what they see on the wall in front of them is what they perceive as reality. However, one is finally set free from his chains and thus is able to see the real reality; he is able to see the world as it exists not as it is shown to them. He sees the shadows, then reflections, then objects themselves, then the stars and the moon, and finally sunlight, which symbolises the actual nature of things or the truth. After having set eyes on the sun, this man cannot go back to the cave, to the dark, and see the world as he used to before he started contemplating the truth.
Topic: In Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" from his Republic, the vivid imagery of escaping the slavery of our shackled understanding of the world is quite pronounced. Do you agree that escaping the cave is to be desired? What can or should you do to pull yourself or those around you from the cave? The Cave in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” represents the world that we live in as we See it and believe it to be in our own reality. Plato uses the description of “Darkness” to possibly imply there are false realities that we each have and uses “sunlight” to stand for being enlightened by the “new world”, which is what the released prisoner was to experience.
They are not learning the moral and life lessons that are usually taught at home by Mom and Dad, and instead they are learning about morality and life from teachers and through videogames and TV programs. The world today had too many options for people without morals. We have television and internet to influence us. Plato's theory on the Allegory of the Cave is somewhat intricate, but basic at the same time, he discusses The Allegory of the Cave in that we are chained to a wall (all facing the wall), behind us is another wall with figures walking across it, behind that wall is a pit of fire, the firelight casts shadows upon the wall in front of those chained to the wall (515). Because we are chained to that wall we are afraid of what could be behind us, we never look.