Symbolism And Symbolism In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

“Allegory of the Cave” by Plato is a story that contrasts the differences between what is genuine and what is seen. It starts off with a long and dark cave, in the cave there are prisoners who, since birth, are tied around the neck and legs, inside a dark cave. The prisoners also have a limited field of vision, because of their ties they should always look forward. There is a light that illuminates their den, emanating a fiery fire behind them, a considerable and elevated distance. For their part, the prisoners have been able to see only shadows of objects projected by the high fire in the cave and the lack of outside knowledge, believing that those shadows are real objects, pertaining to their own reality. They have never been outside the …show more content…
Throughout the passage, we can appreciate numerous symbolisms that have an interpretation and give a sense to the story. First, the cave is demonstrated to be a sensitive world in which prisoners live deceived and confident that their knowledge about things is reliable. Next, prisoners being ignorant towards outside knowledge. Then, chains representing the body; keeping us tied to ignorance. Also, shadows are prejudices speculations and distorted imagens of reality. As well, the sun dazzling the prisoner indicates education is a complex process that requires efforts, but at the same time it can hurt. Furthermore, the sun shown as the outside world being the reality. In addition, the journey to leave the cave would be leaving behind ignorance and going towards knowledge. Finally, not seeing again in the darkness means those who attained real knowledge has difficulty in reconfiguring their own soul to earthly things as we can see in Plato passage “Imagen once more, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation: would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?” Overall, the whole message Plato is trying to say is it would be a process to …show more content…
On one side lies the world of ideas, and on the other the one of the senses. Intelligible and sensitive world respectively. Plato said “And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appears over the wall? Some of them are talking, other silent,” consequently everything we see is just a reflection of a sensitive world, which means we are leaving in a land of shadows. For example, the ignorance of people caused by the media. The vast majority of society today is manipulative because it’s limited to see the reality that the media want to present, and think that this is enough to have the maximum knowledge. we see the majority of the population, or the people, who only see the shadows that the internet, radio, news, newspapers, among others. They would have only the first step of knowledge, which is imagination. we see the media, which manage observation, but they keep the people in the darkness of the shadows of ignorance and handles them like puppets. In the last positions we have: education and thinkers, a cultured and educated society, who knows how to see different points of view (of reality) and have a criterion, can prevent only being shown the shadows and helping to be the sun that enlightens all the people so they have different and certain concepts, not only what they want to sell for the price of their