The prisoners spent their lives debating what the shadows were as they couldn’t see the walkway and had no knowledge that this existed. The prisoner who could guess the quickest and guess what was coming next would be crowned the winner and be respected by the others. A single prisoner is then released one day and forced to turn around and examine the fire and walkway: “the unexamined life is not worth living”. The prisoner is then led out of the cave, reluctantly, as the light of the fire blinded and confused him. The prisoner reached the real world outside of the cave and, blinded by the sun, saw the real world in its glory and realised the illusion of the shadows.
A) Explain the analogy of the cave Plato’s analogy of the cave is taken from the republic and is used to illustrate his theory of the forms. The analogy uses elements of the story to symbolise the situation in which people find themselves in reality. The analogy can be broken into three different sections: the description of the cave, a prisoner breaking free and the prisoner returning. Within the cave there is a section facing a wall with prisoners chained in such a way that they cannot turn their heads or move from their spot. Behind them, out of their view is a walkway on which people walk across holding objects above them.
He leads them from the cave and shows them reality, challenging all they have ever known. Returning to the cave the prisoners reject what he has shown them, although the saviour realises he cannot go back to his former vision. He becomes an outcast with knowledge without friends. The difference between the fire and the sun is key to understanding the analogy. The light of the fire gave the prisoners their limited vision, showing only shadows, whereas the brightness of the sun allowed and expansive view of reality.
On the other hand the lady in "A Sorrowful Woman” has a husband and child but finds she sick and tired of what she had. The two women approached their problems in different manners. Faye disclosed her true condition to her boyfriend and gave him the choice to find another person who could bore him children. After tearful episodes, the couple resolved their problem and ended up marrying and being happy. Meanwhile, the married woman isolated herself from her family.
Lear’s blindness also caused him to banish one of his loyal followers, Kent. Kent was able to see Cordelia’s true love for her father, and tried to protect her from her blind father’s foolishness. After Kent was banished he created a disguise for himself and he was eventually hired by Lear as a servant. Lear’s failure to determine his servant’s true identity proved once again how blind Lear actually was. As the play progressed, Lear’s eyesight started to become clearer.
In Act Two, we see that Hale's former confidence is slowly eroding. This is demonstrated by the fact that he shows up at the Proctors' house of his own accord. He's there without the court's knowledge, trying to get an idea of who the Proctors are for himself. This independent action is a big hint that he's probably beginning to doubt the validity of his own conclusions. When John Proctor gets convicted in Act Three, through Abigail's transparent machinations, Hale's confidence is shattered.
Explain Plato’s analogy of the cave [25] Plato’s analogy of the cave describes some people who are prisoners and they are only able to see one wall of the cave. Behind them was a lit fire which gave light to be able to cast shadows onto the wall that the prisoners were facing. These shadows were cast by puppeteers who were behind a wall and held things up to tell stories to the prisoners via the wall. One prisoner is forced out of the cave, where he has been his whole life, to see the ‘real’ world. He finds out, after adjusting to the new sunlight, that the shadows were just representations of real objects and that the shadows he had believed to be real objects were in fact not.
The cave symbolises the World of Sense, a figure of captives are tired by their ankles and necks so that they are unable to change direction. They have been brought up like this since birth this is why they don’t know anything else but this. The prisoners are individuals who act like marionettes before the fire which burns so that they would be able to see shadows which flicker on the wall before them. The captives observe this flickering shadow which appears on the wall before them, eventually they developed a pattern over-time. They try to prognosticate movements of the shadows; the sounds are made by individuals with the shadows, this is what they think as true reality.
Plato describes the cave as having prisoners chained up facing the cave wall. These prisoners are in an illusory world (our world- the world of appearance). These prisoners are chained to the floor, these chains could symbolize our senses, saying our senses (the chains) cause us to accept everything that we see and hear around us. There is a fire burning behind them, of which they can see the shadows of on the wall in front of them, they believe the shadow is real and is the reality of the fire. As well as the shadow of the fire, the prisoners can also see shadows of people crossing the footbridge behind them, carrying stone animal statues; again they believe these shadows to be real.
Allegory of the Cave-Plato “Allegory of the Cave” presents a vision of a group of prisoners chained in front of a fire observing the shadows of artificial objects carried by persons walking in the trek behind them and what would happen if a prisoner is set free. Through a serious of metaphors, Plato argues that a hero is man of wisdom, prowess, and endurance. First of all, the cave, chains and shadows show a full-scale condition of US citizens-they are confined by the ideal democratic and peaceful images pictured by the government such as those promising speeches given by candidates for presidency. The prisoners--Citizens in the US are only exposed to those appealing words of the government—“Mission accomplished:)”-- that they are unable to make a positive change because they cannot see the relatively cruel reality until someone is set free to “walk with eyes lifted to the light” and come back down there to inform them. As this free man sees the light, an “eye ache” is inevitable because he’s been in the dark for too long.