Plato’s Analogy Of The Cave The prisoners represent the ignorant, narrow minded society. They have no understanding of anything other than what they see. Their chains hold them back from the truth and they can only understand when they are released. The shadows fool the prisoners in to not seeing things in their true form, making them misinterpret what they see. The fire represents the truth to the narrow minded.
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.
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
A cave is a dark, dingy place that a normal, civilized human cannot fathom of spending their life in. However that is not the case for these prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. “Here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads.” Reading this quote one can sense that these prisoners are pitiful. Restrictions are put on them where these puppeteers --as I shall call them-- are manifesting shadows. As one might think, “Shadows?” These shadows represent an object to the prisoner.
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. The prisoner returned to the cave with his enlightenment and tried to explain to the others of the reality. The other prisoners did not believe him, he was over-excited, blinded, confused and clumsy. The prisoners became frustrated with the man and wanted rid of the man disturbing their reality. In some versions of the story the released prisoner is even killed by the others.
He makes it near impossible for those people to see the truth spoken by the Bible. All they know is what he wants them to know, which are the shadows the prisoners see cast on the wall. The “prisoners” do not even know that there is a better world outside for them. They either believe that their “cave” is the best place to live, or the only place to live. These prisoners can break free though, by seeing the light, or God.
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
So the prisoners see only shadows on the wall, being the reality to them. When one of the prisoners was freed, had a different view of the reality and then has thought the reality was in the cave. When one of the prisoners goes out the cave, the world gets clearer. Seeing the reality, he looked to the sun and immediately turned his head back, because he was not accustomed to a lot of light. Then he realized that the sun is an important factor which is responsible for the seasons and the year so had gotten the conclusion that the sun was the form of the good.
The word respect, was not found in this methods. Moreover, these two methods were similar to each other, in the way that both methods used punishment as the main tool of correction. Apart from, guards were not teach on how to behave with prisoners, this is why no limitation were applied. If a punishment situation was going on, other guards not participating with his workmates were to take pictures and laugh about what is happening. It was like if we came back to slavery times, something not tolerated at all in this society.
Unit 2 Plato’s “Allegory” Assignment Your Name Here Kaplan University HU250 – 08 In the book The Republic, Plato through “the Allegory of the cave” makes a difference between illusion as a truth and the truth as a reality. In that scenario, Plato used the cave, the flame, the shadow, the sun and the return to the old “world” to demonstrate: That knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the nature, it uses the cave as the hotbed of misunderstanding. He believes that the shadow seen in the wall and being interpreted by the prisoners as the truth is simply the reflection of the truth and that anyone no matter his rank within this “world of truth” is ignorant of the truth in real nature. Plato uses the sun as the light of life for philosophers and the knowledge of people and the period the prisoner spent out of the cave for its first time is seen as the journey of a philosopher trying to understand and establish the different between the “truth” in the cave and the reality. Once the reality established, the prisoner wanted to free other prisoners because he believes they were living a false reality and this persuasion created conflicts.