Allegory Of The Cave Summary

The legend of Gyges is a Story told by a man named Glaucon to Socrates that depicts the story of a shepherd name Gyges who finds a magic ring. In the story there is a great storm that erupts followed by an earthquake that splits the ground in two prompting Gyges to climb down into the earth. Inside the earth he finds a hollow bronze horse with what he descripts as a “dead body of stature” (28) with a “more than a human” (28) appearance inside the horse. On the body of stature Gyges finds only a ring and takes it and begins to ascend back out of the hole. When Gyges returns to the surface he finds out that when he turns the collet of the ring it turns him invisible. With this power Gyges went on to seduce the queen and slay the king unjustly …show more content…
Plato uses this journey to describe his view on knowledge. A prisoner is forced to watch a puppet show on a cave wall and only sees the shadows of the puppets their whole life. In this story it states, “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.” (WEB). This is an analogy showing that knowledge is only as deep as we are allowed to see it. Further in the story the prisoner is somehow released from only seeing the shadows and is allowed to move. The story depicts what happens after his is released by saying, “At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turns his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains.” (WEB) and “When he is approaching near to being and his eye turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision” (WEB). To me this is an analogy that knowledge will be hard and painful to find at first but in time knowledge will become easier to attain as you become more immersed into it until you finally have all knowledge. After the prisoner has finally left the cave he finds himself pitying the other prisoners that are still in the cave and are ignorant in their perception of reality. He decides to go to the cave and release the other prisoners but soon finds out that the prisoners don’t want to be released and feel that they already know reality. Glaucon says further on that, “he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this manner.” (WEB). This shows that someone who seeks knowledge and finds it wants to show the truth to people but people will always be opposed to something they don’t believe or understand. After the whole story Plato is able to convey that knowledge is always better than ignorance and I would have to agree with him. One example of why I agree with him is