The prisoner is scared and wants to go back to looking at the shadows with the other prisoners. Next, this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the world above. At first, he is so dazzled by the light up there that he can only look at shadows, then at reflections, then finally at the
Plato, through the spoken words of Socrates, attempts to illustrate the value of education in the form of an allegory to Glaucon. In book seven of Plato’s Republic, Socrates verbalizes a realization that the average person living within their society could both think and speak without any cognizance of the Forms. In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave; with this he begins to lead Glaucon to understand the difference between genuine knowledge and opinion or belief. The allegory of the cave is supposed to explain how the people of society can appear to function well without any knowledge of Forms. Socrates invites Glaucon to imagine prisoners who have been chained since childhood
In the analogy one of the prisoners is released, he turns around and discovers the fire, people and the rest of the things behind the prisoners. At first it was painful for the prisoner to look at the fire as his eyes were only accustomed to the shadows, gradually however he becomes used to the light and can see more clearly. Plato uses the cave to represent the World of Appearances or the Empirical World- the world in which we live. The shadows on the wall represent images, shadows and other illusions which we can see from the sun, here depicted as the fire. The prisoner is dragged by force out of the cave into the true sunlight.
From time to time individuals carry objects in front of the fire and shadows are cast against the wall in front of them. The prisoners observe the shadows that flicker before them as reality as it is all they have known all their lives. The prisoners in this case represent the ignorant unenlightened individuals yet to discover philosophical truth. In a way Plato used these ignorant prisoners as a representation of the government at his time, he believed that the politicians were ignorant to the world of forms and therefore unsatisfactory as leaders. Plato argues that the shadows are equivalent to our five senses deceiving individuals like ourselves.
“The Cathedral” and “The Allegory of the Cave” are two short stories that resemble each other in the need to break free from negative illusions. In the “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato describes a man named Socrates who describes an illusion. This illusion included prisoners in a cave who have been chained by their arms and legs. These prisoners are bound to the floor and unable to turn their heads to see what goes on behind them. The prisoners are only able to see what the puppeteers are casting on the wall, which they perceive as reality.
Plato’s text explains the progress of mankind becoming educated, from total darkness, and Malcolm X also explains how he himself was imprisoned; and used that time to become educated. I have read two very interesting texts about freedom, resistance, and oppression. “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X and “the Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, both have a person trying to learn what is outside their prison cell or cave. As explained in the passage “Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along 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.
These captives are forced to live in this dark reality believing that this all that there is. Once one of the prisoners is released from the cave and sees what the world actually is he realizes that what he thought was the truth was all an illusion. He sees the sun and knows that everything exists because of the sun, much like the shadows existed because of the fire. With his new found knowledge of reality, he is forced to return to the cave with his fellow prisoners. The others don’t believe him when he tries to explain the truth.
In the analogy of the cave there are the prisoners, representing the ordinary, ignorant man and then there is the man who escapes the cave, representing the philosopher’s discovery of true knowledge. Plato explains that the prisoners are in this illusory world because all they see is the shadows cast by the statues on the wall in front of them and so the prisoners believe that the shadows are reality because it is all that they can see. Through this he can apply this to the rest of humanity in that he majority of humanity live in an illusory world where one cannot differentiate between reality and appearance. Just as the prisoners are content in accepting the shadows as reality, people are content in accepting what their senses tell them as facts without questioning the deeper understanding. Plato believed that behind every concept or object in the visible world, there is an unseen reality, which he calls its Form.
Diffused sunlight enters through the cave through the entrance. One of these prisoners breaks free of his bindings and escapes the cave, when he leaves the cave he exits into a world of beauty and reality. The prisoner out of a sense of duty returns to the prisoners and tells them of the world beyond the cave. The prisoners do not believe him and kill him. Every aspect of the allegory is symbolic of Plato’s theory of the forms; the prisoners represent ordinary members of society who are not versed in the idea of the forms.
Shake ENC 1101 06 February, 2008 Thoughts on Plato’s “The Myth of the Cave” Plato’s “The myth of the cave” illustrates an attempt by “Socrates” to explain to “Glaucon” about the people that are chained deep within the boundaries of a dark cave. Strangled so that their visualization is restricted, in a world that is a mere reflection of the real world, where the “idea of good” is curtained and views are imaginary. The first sentence itself depicts the nature of their conversation in which Socrates says “Let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened” (339). This showcases that the essay is about illusions and shadows and, as I read more, I find it to be about the differences in the “judgments and views” that are based on imagination with the ones based on “Raw data and knowledge”. As Plato explains the differences in our natures, he reflects the life of the prisoners citing “They see only their own shadows or the shadows of one another” (339), as they are tied to perceive only shadows on the back of the cave that are emitted by artificial objects and the light that is thrown by a fire “To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (340).