In the 1998 film, The Truman Show, featuring Jim Carrey as the main protagonist, it poses philosophical questions pertaining to Plato’s allegory of the cave found in The Republic. The main character of a fictional television show was Truman Burbank who lived in an alternate reality that was actually a television set that he perceived to be real. From his birth, to early childhood, teenage years, and adult life, Truman has been filmed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through a television broadcast to the real world. Truman has grown up to believe that this alternate world is his reality and is related to the men only seeing shadows in a cave, according to Plato. This is shown similarly and differently through scenes in The Truman Show. Everything
…show more content…
Those who live in the town are actors and routinely intervene in Truman’s life according to their each individual script. Truman is the only person on the set that does not know he is being filmed. Truman is an example of the men in the cave in Plato’s allegory of the cave. The men in the cave only see shadows of those walking by through the small amount of light from the fire behind them as they are facing a wall. These men have only seen this cave wall and nothing else, whereas Truman was entered into a fictional world from birth and believed what he was only subjected to, this small town that he never left (Plato 246). For Truman, his daily routine is his shadows to the cave men. If something interrupts the routine, the creators quickly find a way to fix their mistakes to make it seem like it was meant to happen in the first place. Everything in Truman’s life is synchronized which is seen when Truman tries to prove this point to his wife. He says how a woman on a red …show more content…
After his creator talks to him and tries to convince him to stay in this world because it is safer and better, Truman stands at the door to the exit with a decision to make. Truman thinks about the life that he has lived and asks if any of his world was real, to which the creator responds that Truman was real (Niccol 1998). The real world is no better than a fake world and it is best to stay where everything seems right and comfortable to him. This could be related to the one man from the cave trying to convince the other men to come to the real world. The other men do not believe him that it will be better and would rather stick to what is known and comfortable to what they have conformed to believe (Plato 247). As Plato had written, “Would it not be said that he had returned from his upward journey with his eyesight spoiled, and that it was not worthwhile even to attempt to travel upward?” The men in the cave do not want anything to do with the world in the light if they believe it had ruined the man who could not longer see in the dark as clearly as before (Plato 247). If Truman leaves the set, he will not understand the real world and would be afraid enough to want to go back to the alternate reality he previously lived in. “We accept the reality of the world for which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that,” the creator said
Those who live in the town are actors and routinely intervene in Truman’s life according to their each individual script. Truman is the only person on the set that does not know he is being filmed. Truman is an example of the men in the cave in Plato’s allegory of the cave. The men in the cave only see shadows of those walking by through the small amount of light from the fire behind them as they are facing a wall. These men have only seen this cave wall and nothing else, whereas Truman was entered into a fictional world from birth and believed what he was only subjected to, this small town that he never left (Plato 246). For Truman, his daily routine is his shadows to the cave men. If something interrupts the routine, the creators quickly find a way to fix their mistakes to make it seem like it was meant to happen in the first place. Everything in Truman’s life is synchronized which is seen when Truman tries to prove this point to his wife. He says how a woman on a red …show more content…
After his creator talks to him and tries to convince him to stay in this world because it is safer and better, Truman stands at the door to the exit with a decision to make. Truman thinks about the life that he has lived and asks if any of his world was real, to which the creator responds that Truman was real (Niccol 1998). The real world is no better than a fake world and it is best to stay where everything seems right and comfortable to him. This could be related to the one man from the cave trying to convince the other men to come to the real world. The other men do not believe him that it will be better and would rather stick to what is known and comfortable to what they have conformed to believe (Plato 247). As Plato had written, “Would it not be said that he had returned from his upward journey with his eyesight spoiled, and that it was not worthwhile even to attempt to travel upward?” The men in the cave do not want anything to do with the world in the light if they believe it had ruined the man who could not longer see in the dark as clearly as before (Plato 247). If Truman leaves the set, he will not understand the real world and would be afraid enough to want to go back to the alternate reality he previously lived in. “We accept the reality of the world for which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that,” the creator said