First, Beatty is the type of person, who after learning the truth and reality returns to the unreality he was used to. This relates to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The cave that Plato thought of was set up with prisoners chained up, facing a wall that projects shadows that originate from puppets behind the prisoners on a platform. Beneath the platform and behind the prisoners is an opening which leads into the real world. The essence of the philosophy is that a prisoner is let go into the real world with the knowledge they have, the puppets.
The allegory of the cave makes a contrast between people who see only appearances, but mistake them for the truth, and those who really do see the truth. Plato said that the reason we can recognise and classify things in the visible world is because we have a prior understanding of them from the world of the forms. The allegory begins with descriptions of prisoners in a cave who are only able to look straight ahead of themselves because they are chained. They have a fire behind them, and a wall in front, and the cave has a long tunnel entrance so that there is no natural daylight in the cave, only firelight. The cave conveys a sense of being trapped.
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.
Both stories have key points that can be analyzed and related to one another almost exactly. In the three writings, they deal with the human brain and how it functioned for the purpose of individual stories. It was very appealing as how they saw the human brain and what was its function. Neo being blinded by the light, like in Plato’s cave, when the prisoner in the cave goes out into the real world and is blinded by the light. The journey from the cave was described as impartially painful, like in the matrix; Neo seemed in some sort of uneasiness when getting to the real world; both men were given the option to stay or not; there was an image of both of them being pulled into the light; they were both prisoners, while in different ways, but never the less, still prisoners; and once they found the truth never the man in the cave or Neo could go back.
Plato's “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” is ostensibly a tale of prisoners locked in a cave with eyes bound to a wall. [1] These prisoners represent the unreflective in our society, and the story attempts to illustrate the ascent towards absolute knowledge. The story is a reflection of Plato's “Forms”, the idea that each object and abstraction in the world belongs to a perfect model only attainable through thought. [2] The cave represents an uncivilized society without philosophy. The shadows thrown on the wall symbolize the tangible objects in the universe and the fire represents our sun which illuminates them.
They think of the shadows as true reality, this is because the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. The prisoners in this case represent everyone on earth that hasn’t connected to the forms, and therefore connected to reality. Plato believes that the objects we see in the physical world are reflections or imitations of the true ‘form’ of the object in the world of Forms. These reflections are called the ‘particulars’ which Plato believes are a form of reality but not true reality. In the analogy of the cave, one of the prisoners breaks free of his chains and tries to leave the cave in search of the real world.
They are facing a cave wall upon which shadows are being projected. The shadows form because of a great fire at the back of the cave. There are people carrying statues across a walkway in front of the fire, it is these statues that are being projected onto the cave wall. The prisoners believe these shadows to be reality as it is all they know the world to be. Diffused sunlight enters through the cave through the entrance.
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). Plato then explains how the prisoner would react when taken out from the darkness of the cave to the light of reality. With enlightenment a prisoner might be turned to see first the artificial objects, then the fire, then the real world, the reflections and last of all the “Sun”. Each stage would be complicated and unfamiliar, and at the end the now enlightened prisoner would be unable to communicate his knowledge to the prisoners still in the depths of the cave, unknown of the real world, the world of forms. It would be similar to the journey in which the pilgrims assemble down in some cave and receive some revelation; if an enlightened pilgrim came to help them they
Plato moves on to insist that because we are able to recollect information our souls must have previous knowledge before the existence of our bodies. This idea is further advanced within Plato's “Republic” where he illustrates his theory of the forms using the now famous allegory of the cave. Plato leads us to imagine a dark cave connected to the outside world by a long passage. In the cave there are prisoners, with their backs to the entrance, unable to move. Behind them is a fire casting shadows of the people and objects moving along the passage.
Plato uses various metaphors such as the chains to represent the senses which keep humans from exploring and gaining higher knowledge. The puppeteers who represent those who know and use their knowledge to control the rest. The shadows which stands for what people believe they are seeing which relates back to the matrix, which their whole world is make believe , but there are those who challenge the system and become aware of what is really going on. The sun represents the fully enlightened stage, completely out of the cave which obviously stands for the ignorance most people hold. The fire is the hard reality which is hard to look at but once a person sees that the shadows on the wall are not what they seem to be the fire becomes the only way to enlightenment.
This happen because the sun is a metaphor for knowledge and the dark cave is a metaphor for ignorance or not knowing anything. In Plato’s text here it shows you where he says the sun is the knowledge. “This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun.” When the prisoners go out of the cave they see the puppeteers and the sun they realize that the shadows on the wall of the cave where not real and that they feel weird for thinking that. They are overwhelmed with all of the truth. When the prisoners return to the cave and see the other prisoner that were not able to leave the cave they start feel like they are a leader or like they have to tell the truth of what is really going on.
Escaping the Cave The “Allegory of the Cave” is Plato’s representation of the soul’s path towards enlightenment and knowledge. Plato uses the cave to contrast what we perceive and what is reality. The shackled prisoners represent the unenlightened people in their ignorance of what is real. The prisoners know nothing except for the shadows created by the fire behind them and accept this as reality. These captives are forced to live in this dark reality believing that this all that there is.
Plato argues that the shadows are equivalent to our five senses deceiving individuals like ourselves. He believes that the objects we see in the physical world are shadowy copy of the true ‘Form’ of that object in the World of Forms. Plato asks us to imagine that one of the prisoners were to be set free. He would struggle to adjust to his new view of the environment and be blinded by the light of the sun. He would quickly realize that the shadows he saw on the walls were not the real objects themselves.
The chains which are bound to the prisoners represent the mind and how they hold humans captives to what we want to believe because we have been brought up in that way. The fire, shadows and echoes represents the world as we see it. This world is a aposteri this means everything in it are fake and they all have little portion of the real image. As the prisoner who escaped from the cave is trying to get to the surface, he suffers from trying to get to the surface. He must also face the problem of trying to adjust to the sunlight.
Initially, Plato is filled his story with symbols that are nearly represent an idea that he wants to explore. First, a metaphor that is represented throughout the story is the cave which symbolizes the human mind. In the story, there are people in the cave who are enclosed in a world where shadows are the meaning of everything and there is no other explanation behind things. Plato states “human being living in an underground den, which has a mouth open toward the light and reaching all along the den…”(1235). Also in the story, it takes a man to get out of the cave for him to realize that he has been taught the wrong things and that the truth was being kept behind the shadows.
The Allegory of the Cave is a dialogue between teacher, Socrates, and pupil ‘Glaucon.’ In it, the teacher attempts to guide the student through an extended metaphor of “education and ignorance as a picture of the condition of our nature” (500). Plato likens members of society to unknowing prisoners in a cave who can only perceive shadows of unseen objects. These shadows are cast by a fire that burns behind the prisoners and reflects images on the walls in front of the prisoners. Once a prisoner is guided out of the cave and sees the world in its true, harsh, light, the prisoner is able to understand that what they see in the cave is a fallacy. Upon return to the cave, the ‘enlightened’ prisoner cannot relate to life in the cave.
“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.
Although both works are in concurrence with the melding of perception and reality, there are as many differences as there are similarities in the authors uses of character, symbolism, and intent. The situations in which the characters are placed is the most distinct similarity between the works. Both characters are placed in a position where they are forced to perceive what is not real, looking at "shadows" of the truth. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, several prisoners are chained to the ground with their heads bound forward to face a wall. Day in and day out, they are forced to watch the moving shadows made by men pushing figures in front of firelight, not knowing anything of the outside world.
The book VII of The Republic by Plato revolves on the role of education in human life. He present a metaphor of the Allegory of the Cave that depicts on the prisoners of the den who were, all their lived in the dark, with their legs and necks are chained so their head cannot move, and all they see were shadows coming from the huge fire ignited on their backs. This state of darkness is equated to ignorance while the moment when a prisoner was exposed to the real world indicates enlightenment and being educated. “…if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look toward the light, he will suffer sharp pains..” Every one of us would certainly feel unusual if taken out from our comfort zone or if something we’ve got used to gone through a drastic change.
While proponents of ignorance would argue that bliss is desirable, bliss based in ignorance is necessarily ephemeral and superficial, and the perpetuation of this blind bliss is both unsustainable and ultimately harmful. The truth is often painful, but with this pain comes clarity. Kafka would describe this pain as a blow to the head – it is a sharp, deliberate pain that forces one to grapple with reality. Plato describes the trauma of sudden exposure to the truth in “Allegory of the Cave,” where he depicts one of the prisoners being “set free and forced suddenly to stand up, turn his head, and walk with his eyes lifted to the light; all these movements would be painful, and he would be too dazzled to make out the objects whose shadows he had been used to see” (Allegory.46-53). The pain the prisoner feels is twofold – the physical pain from sudden movement, and the psychological pain from realizing that everything he