Eyes Wide Open By Richard Powers

Coming to college, I was eager to formally learn more about philosophy. As we began to study works of Plato, I found the Allegory of the Cave to be especially interesting. The thought of this specific concept lingered with me for a while as I had little time to stop and think about it. One night however, I could do some deep thinking and began unlocking a great door whose key was given to me by Plato’s allegory.

In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave and Freire’s The“Banking” Concept of Education, the idea of education and restrictions is discussed and pondered on. In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato tells us his ideas and beliefs through a story that involves three prisoners who are chained up in a cave. Their backs are towards the entrance, and they are only exposed to shadows and echoes. When one of the prisoners is released he enters a world filled with confusion and disbelief. In Freire’s The “Banking” Concept of Education, he addresses his notions of today’s education system by setting the scene of students in a classroom who are only given a teacher and the teacher’s knowledge. Although Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave shows that people are restricted in knowing the truth because they are chained up and Freire thinks that students can release themselves from their restrictions by questioning the higher power , I claim that both Plato and Freire make similar arguments because both claim that the reason to why we are restricted is because our perception of truth comes from only one source that is given to us.

Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” examines the quest, responsibility, and cost of intellectual enlightenment. The story is of a man, being held prisoner since birth, being freed and learning that his perception of reality was inaccurate. He shared his discovery, which was met with contention and anger from the people in his society when he tried to relieve them of their ignorance. The group were all born prisoners in a cave where they could not see behind them, and only could hear the echoes, and see the shadows cast of people and items moving behind them. One day, the man was released and was forced to embark out of the dwelling to see that it was actual people and inanimate objects being reflected in front of them. After having difficulty

In the Pulitzer Prize winning civil war novel Killer Angels, Michael Shaara covers five days of the historic battle between the Northern and Southern United States at Gettysburg. Both the North and the South fought for freedom, although they did not have equivalent definitions of freedom. The North and the South were unwavering in their beliefs and their hope for a better United States, but what the two butted heads the most on was slavery. The South was a primarily agrarian region which relied heavily on the agriculture of crops like cotton and sugarcane, both of which required intense manual labor, unlike the North who was more so industrialized; however, as William Preston said, it was not cotton that was “the south’s king” but it was slavery that made them so prosperous. The South relied on slavery because having many workers to tend to these cash crops without having to pay them saved farmers and plantation owner’s money that they could use to buy more slaves that put out more work leading to more land for more crops, or to have more money to pay their taxes. Many Southerners like William Preston thought that owning other people was their divine right as white men. The Civil War was started over the North and South’s conflicting views on whether they had the “civil” right to own or not own slaves. The Northern and Southern states developed themselves much differently than one another because of their agrarian versus industrialized economy. As the states developed they

The book Black Hearts is written by Jim Frederick and tells the story of all the controversial accounts one infantry unit ran into while on deployment in Baghdad, Iraq. The book is a documentation, captured accounts and events written down to tell the crazy story these soldiers went through. The specific unit Frederick writes about and what Black Hearts is about is 2nd brigade of the 101st airborne infantry division. “Black Hearts” was the unofficial insignia of 2nd brigade. Frederick covers one platoon in particularly and their ethical dilemmas they encounter while on deployment. 1st platoon, Bravo Company, 1-502nd Regiment is the unit the book covers. Many things on deployment unfold poorly for this platoon such as having little

In the book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, by Seth Holmes he mentioned the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his philosophy “Bad Faith”. Holmes explains “The phrase “bad faith” was introduced by Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the ways in which individuals knowingly deceive themselves to avoid acknowledging realities disturbing to them(Holmes86). The phrase explains us, when something bad is happening in our lives, we lie to ourselves to escape the truth that we don’t have to face them. This happens to everyone when we commit a really bad mistake and we don’t want to accept it. Another way this may happen is when you’re in a bad situation and you try to replace it with something else to get your mind off of it. Basically it’s a distraction, so we don’t think about what’s actually going on.

In this essay I intend to explore the narrative conventions and values, which Oliver Smithfield presents in the short story Victim. The short story positions the reader to have negative and sympathetic opinion on the issues presented. Such as power, identity and bullying. For example Mickey the young boy is having issues facing his identity. It could be argued that finding your identity may have the individual stuck trying to fit in with upon two groups.

When thinking of Mexican American immigrants what comes to mind? The American public consistently listens to the media telling stories of how these people cross the border illegally, which is deemed as a crime. Immigrants are portrayed just as stealing American jobs and benefiting from government programs such as welfare. Countless people think it was a voluntary action for them to come to the United State, therefore whatever comes their way is what they deserve regardless if it is health problems, racism or low paying jobs. However, what most of American people don’t realize is that the majority of Mexican migrants are forced to migrate to the United State in order to survive. They constantly risk their lives to cross a dangerous border in order to find the jobs that the American people don’t want to endure. In the book called “Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies”, the author, Seth Holmes focuses on the lives of an indigenous Mexican group called the Triquis. Throughout the book, he focuses on the journey of the group from their hometown of Oaxaca to farms in California and Washington. The book also emphasizes how racism and health problems of migrant workers have become invisible to the American people. It is commonly seen that their personal damage such as health problems and placement on the social hierarchy system is only to be blamed on their sole decision to come to a country where they are considered illegal. Instead of blaming the Triqui people for their sickness,

The best book to read is Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper because it’s written by an excellent author, it gives an outlook on a disabled individuals life, and I can connect to it on a personal level.

Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave” and Paulo Freire’s “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” both contend that education is a process of freeing the chains of deception and false images that make us prisoners in the cave of ignorance. I agree with both Plato and Freire in saying that without education, like the prisoners, our perception of reality is distorted by our lack of knowledge.

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” criticize educators improving the lack of awareness and experience and should struggle and encourage themselves to understand and evaluate the knowledge behind what they are

In Plato’s work The Republic one of his books Allegory of the Cave envisions the world as a dark cave, human beings as trapped prisoners, and all of our experiences as nothing but shadows on a wall. The way we perceive things around us and the way we lead our lives is actually not the truth. Comparing the effects of education and the lack of it on our nature in this case classes that we have already grown accustomed to. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a reminder of what it would be like if we only took classes that were for what our major required and not some other form of education that may help in other aspects of life. If we didn’t have this requirement to venture out and learn something new, we would only know the shadow of the cave (math, english, history). Only believing what we are subject to believe and that is what have been put in front of average high school students k-12th grade. In an article I researched “Where Can Philosophy Take Me” it basically is saying how philosophy is learning how to think, not what to think

Plato's main goal in the Allegory of the Cave is to communicate the relevance and importance of the concept of intellectual perspective. His real agenda is to illustrate that most people are likely perceiving the world around them in a much more limited manner than they realize and that most of us are, to some degree, living our lives in the same circumstances as the prisoners he

In Plato’s article The Republic he describes that we all exist as part of a society in which he refers to as a cave. Plato says in the opening of this article “Let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened and unenlightened”. With our heads restrained to a wall and not capable to perceive our surrounding, we accept as true the shadows to be reality. He then goes on to explain that with a teacher is the only way that we can move from our state of being a prisoner and moving into a new reality beyond the cave and that we would discover the true reality to be painful, and then want to return to the state of deception of the cave. He explains this by saying “Plato also believes that we are all have the ability within ourselves to

Some of us go through tough experiences as children. In Patricia Grace’s novel Baby No-Eyes under the chapter of Kura, the reader gets to see how Gran Kura’s traumatic experience as a child is finally revealed after being held secret for sixty years.