Allegory Of The Cave Rhetorical Analysis

How would life be when people finally open their eyes and stop living in denial and accepting the truth. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, there are three prisoners that have been imprisoned in a cave for their whole life. They’ve only seen the same wall this whole time and their only source of light would is a fire which is behind them which creates shadows. At one point a prisoner is able to free himself from the chains, when he goes out he realizes that everything he’s been seeing on the walls of the cave are different once outside. He learns what is real and what isn’t and goes back to tell the other prisoners everything he’s learned and seen. Once he goes back and tells the other prisoners, they don’t believe him and thought he was crazy and chose not to believe him. The overall message conveyed in the literature would be that you should keep an open mind and accept change because deception conceals reality from the eyes of others, Plato conveys this theme when he using imagery, irony,tone and symbolism to convey this message. …show more content…
“SOCRATES: Do you think the one who had gotten out of the cave would still envy those within the cave and would want to compete with them who are esteemed and who have power?...Wouldn't he or she prefer to put up with absolutely anything else rather than associate with those opinions that hold in the cave and be that kind of human being?” (Plato 5). When the prisoner tries to free the others, they refuse and laugh at him and choose to stay in the cave even after he explains to them that they are being deceived and that he could help them. This is what most portrays the theme of the story in the fact that even though what the liberated prisoner knew to be true was reality, the perspective and the ignorance of the other prisoners prevented them from seeing