Caves

of education, and also their want for education. Socrates tells Glaucon to imagine human beings as living in an underground cave with a long entrance, open to light across the width of the underground cave. The people in the cave have been there since their early childhood, with their legs and necks bonded, so they could only look in front of them. The light in the cave is from a fire above and behind them. There is a road to this fire, and along the road is a wall. The wall is built like…

Summary of “The Allegory of the Cave” “The Allegory of the Cave,” is a small excerpt from The Republic, Book 7, written by a famous philosopher named Plato. In this excerpt, he vividly describes a mystical process that prepares and awakens man to his true destiny. Prisoners are captivated in the cave in their entire life where they see nothing but an illusion, only a shadow of the object. By chance, one of the prisoners is forced to go outside of the cave, where he discovers the nature of…

Allegory of the Cave“, will inevitably be different. The implications of the metaphor may change with context. In other words, I at the present time will interpret the allegory very differently than someone in Greece 2,400 years ago. That being said, my general understanding of the allegory is that all we know is what we can imagine from the shadows we are experiencing on the walls of the cave. In order to “ turn our whole souls towards reality” we have to look beyond the confines of the cave…

these states of being are still relevant today. People tend to take things at face value and follow what they have been told; once they are able to leave the cave they can see images in a new light.…

find the ideal or perfect truth. By asking such queries, one is able to educate himself by exposing the flaws of the world around him. This importance to educate oneself in order to strive for true reality is exemplified in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” with the unchained prisoner and the Wachowskis’ The Matrix with the primary character Neo. In both storylines, the authors display through their characters that when an individual…

The Cave Allegory This allegory is used to convey Plato’s attempt to explain what the nature of reality is. It displays the role of the masses, the educated, and reality. The setting takes place in a cave. The people within the cave are chained in such a way that they can only see the cave walls. Behind them are these strange figures that would carry objects and walk behind the people. Because there was a fire, the people could see their shadows. Sometimes the figures speak so they thought that…

Upon being forcefully removed from a cave, a prisoner becomes enlightened by the idea that the fire he had seen in the cave was not the raw source of real light. Although he had been blinded with his first encounter with the sun's natural light, over time he would 'grow accustomed before he could see things in that upper world'. Gradually, he sought to learn more and be more knowledgeable about what was above the cave. As his understanding grew, so did his sympathy for those…

directly stated, but revealed in symbolic representation throughout the work. Two examples of allegories are Plato's "The Myth of the Cave" and Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. These two allegories have different meanings, but they have similarities within their storylines. In "The Myth of the Cave," a group of people are "living in an underground cave" and "have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them." Their reality is defined by this and…

I went into the cave to try and get some sleep but couldn 't. I finally dozed off at 6:30 but was awaken at 7:00 am. I heard voice outside of the cave getting closer and closer. I knew I had to leave. As I ran out of the cave, four people came into the cave. Luckily, there were two entrances to the cave and I slipped out of the other entrance just before the people would have been able to see me. I ran down the mountain as fast as I could, still limping from the car crash earlier. Even though…

The Allegory of the Cave In the Allegory of the Cave, the character Socrates states this about the people living in cave society, “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.” (Plato, The Allegory of the Cave”) According to Plato, people accept truth as whatever they see, whatever they grow up with. This idea is very simple, but very revolutionary- and it applies to ancient and modern life. In this cave society, there is nothing known to the people…