Behind the prisoners was a large fire and between the fire and prisoners was a walkway. The fire cast shadows upon the wall and the prisoners believed the shadows to be reality. The walkway allowed people to walk through the cave with great ease. As the people crossed through the cave, past the fire, an illusion was created; the fire cast shadows onto the wall that the prisoners were watching. 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 prisoners represent the citizens of the world within the analogy of the cave and the people who carry the objects are the politicians of the world. Plato had a strong dislike for politicians as he believed they told people only what they wanted to hear, which is represented through them creating shadows of real objects (false hope) to the prisoners. The
However, for a prisoner to get fed up with these chains and mind games, he himself must be able to break away from looking straight ahead. “And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, [515e] will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see,” To a certain extent, one cannot look in one direction for a long period of time. Sooner or later, the eyes will begin to wander and the mind will begin to contemplate on the true meaning of life. With the escape of the prisoner, a whole new
Dooming Myths and Secret Allegories Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Camus’ “Myth of the Sisyphus” both attempt to explain the way people think or why they act as they do. The stories demonstrate the same idea, “without exposure to change, thinking is limited and unawareness is the result.” Both stories illustrate moral and religious attitudes. The “Allegory of the Cave” demonstrates how humans are afraid of change and what they do not know. Plato represents man’s condition as being “chained in a cave” since childhood with their arms and legs immobilized as well as their heads. They are unable to turn around and witness the fire burning behind them.
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.
To inform others and infect others to join him is the real change. Unfortunately, rarely has the history seen somebody debunking the cruel truth to the public and not being retaliated. By trying to free those “prisoners in the cave”, a man is really risking being conflicted, putting in jail or even being sentenced to death like Copernicus’s destination of advocating his heliocentric
People are not speaking up for themselves and for what they think is right. They keep everything locked inside themselves, so no one knows who they truly are. Because of the suppressive societies people loose their sense of freedom, which leads them to go against conformity and become an individual. Firstly, a reason the people
The memory of the World of Forms is lost in the trauma of birth and the physical demands of the body. Plato uses the cave to represent the world of sense experience and the area outside of the cave is the World of Forms and transcendental ideals. He shackles his prisoners in the same way the soul is shackled by the body and the trauma of birth. Therefore Plato believed that after transmigration the soul forgets everything that it learnt in the World of Forms, thus learning is remembering. The prisoner who escapes is a philosopher, a seeker of Truth, whose journey out of the cave is a
This allegory has been used for centuries to depict and understand one’s perception of the world and is still used in the present day. This is shown through the example of the Matrix movie. The Matrix, is a perfect manifestation of Plato’s parable of the cave. Plato’s interpretation of the world, lies in the deeper meaning of looking beyond what is right in front of you. In his description of the parable of the cave, he describes prisoners in a cave ‘with a long entrance open to daylight as wide as the cave,’ the prisoners legs and heads are restricted of movement so they can only look straight ahead of them.
“Allegory of the Cave” is a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon in “The Republic” written by Plato. In this allegory Socrates describes a dark cave deep down the surface where humans are chained and imprisoned. They could not move their body on either side. All they see is the wall they face in the front of them and the shadows of objects shown by the puppeteers. “The prisoners” in Plato's cave prefer to remain as prisoners even after they are released from their bonds because they are deceived by their own desires.