Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

The drawings that appear repeatedly as you research into the many interpretations of Plato’s words create a signified representation based on the signifiers Plato escribed in his writings – the words he used. The existence of such a variety of images, from different times, drawn in different ways, for different reasons, all depicting the same scenario but with different views on the cave Plato describes in his dialogue with Socrates, is testament the existence of the metaphysical world. All the images are different, yet all have a certain caveness, atmosphere of a cave, which makes them undoubtedly the visual depictions of Plato’s theory of

Life for the prisoners goes on this way without occurrence until one of them is freed, led up outside the cave, and shown the real world. The freed person will realize that the truth of the shadowed reality is actually a falsehood. After this realization the person who visited the upper world is returned to imprisonment in the cave. Her eyes have to adjust to the darkness of the cave once again. However, this adjustment naturally takes a long time. As a result, the once free person can no longer see the shadows as well as she did before her release into the upper world. To the people who have remained in the cave, it seems as though going into the upper world has destroyed her faculty for seeing "reality." Some of the captives then say that trying to reach the outer world is harmful, and that anyone caught trying to loose themselves or another person for the purpose of reaching the outside will be punished. Plato says that the cave symbolizes the world of sight and the outside represents the world of knowledge. Plato also instructs people to "interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world." Plato's belief is that in the "world of knowledge the idea of good appears," and that humans should strive to reach this goodness through philosophical thought.

The allegory of The Cave revolves around prisoners who have been bound to chains their entire lives. They face a blank wall, and only a blank wall. They know nothing of what is outside of the cave. They tend to see shadows that pass by, but because the have no knowledge of reality they don’t fully comprehend what these shadows truly are. In time these prisoners find a way out of the chains and travel outside of the cave, and find out there is more to reality then what they thought. Plato used this as a

The prisoners have been in these conditions since their earliest stages of life. The cave, the wall, and the chains are all the prisoners have ever known. Behind the prisoners, there was a raised path. Above the walkway was a platform, where there was a fire burning, and in front of the fire, was a parapet, which as Plato described it , was like that of the screens Puppeteers use to hide themselves and have the puppets be visible . Each and every day, the prisoners see nothing, but the shadows of the objects and people passing between them and the fire. For their entire lives, the prisoners are exposed to nothing but those images and the sounds made by those walking around. These shadows are all they have ever known, in essence; these shadows are their only “reality”. As time passed, the prisoners would grow accustomed to these sights, later on the prisoners would match the objects with names and the familiar sounds to the images of the shadows (514; Appendix A). In discussing the allegory with Glaucon, Socrates toys around the concept of what could happen to a prisoner should they be released after having lived their lives in the cave, with the only knowledge the possess of the world, are the images and sounds by the wall.

In Plato’s essay, “Allegory of The Cave” Plato creates a story about three prisoners in a cave, through this he further makes his point that without knowledge our view of the truth is askew. Plato explains that the three hostages have been shackled in the dark cave their whole lives unable to see the real world. The only piece of actuality they can see are shadows of people crossing in front of the opening of the cave. These figures can drive anyone insane without having any real truth to what the images could be. Without any awareness of the real world just outside of the cave they are forced to adapt and therefore accept their own reality. Plato goes on to say that, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (122). The obscurities are significant because they are the only apprehension the prisoners have, they have nothing to compare it to. The actuality of it to the captives is something other than the truth would be outside of the cave. The forms on the wall are only just shadows, but to them that is everything they have ever known. Plato through his legend portrays

In the ‘The Allegory of the Cave’, Plato uses a philosophical situation to help us as the reader to examine our perception of life by what is around us. Plato uses such an abstract situation to show that we can mistake the information that we gain due to our position in a situation for truth.

Plato expands this analogy in the allegory of the cave. The prisoners, who have lived in the cave since their childhood, “have their necks chained so that they cannot” turn their heads (Book VII, p. 1). From the beginning, their range of sight has been restricted, symbolizing their lack of knowledge. A fire, which resembles a lesser form of the sun, provides the cave with its main source of light, but instead of illuminating objects for the prisoners, the light serves as a backdrop for the shadows that marionette players display on the wall that the prisoners are allowed to see. These shadows understandably become realities for the prisoners, but their belief in pictures made from darkness further emphasizes their ignorance. When one of the prisoners is released, Plato describes his journey to enlightenment as a

Plato, being a Socratic apprentice, followed and transcribed the experiences Socrates had in his teachings and search of understanding. In Plato’s first work, The Allegory of the Cave, Socrates forms the understanding between appearance vs. reality and the deceptions we are subject to by the use of forms. In the cave, the prisoners’ experiences are limited to what their senses can tell them, the shadows on the walls, and their shackles; these appearances are all that they have to form their ideas. When one of the prisoners begins to question his reality he makes his way out of the cave and into the day light. This prisoners understanding of his reality has now expanded, thus the theory of forms; when he returns to the cave to spread the news, the others do not believe him. They have been deceived by their reality and what

In the "Allegory of the Cave," the chained down prisoners are limited with their perception on reality. At

Once one of the prisoner’s is released, he is forced to look at the fire and the objects that once made up his perceived reality, and realizes that the new images he is made to acknowledge are now the accepted forms of reality.

The prisoners represent the lowest stage which is imagination. The next scene is the prisoner is being freed, he forced to look at the fire to see that the statues are not real people. I could not imagine if this was true, because he was probably so in awe of everything. After seeing the fire his eyes are hurting, he realizes that the statues are real, also during this he realizes that there is a world bigger and grander then the cave itself. The stage he is in now is

Plato used imagery to elaborate the forms of theory. One of the allegories he used to explain forms of theory is that of a cave. He introduced the allegory of the cave saying that there are three prisoners tied to some rocks, with their arms and legs bound and their heads tied up so that they can only look at the raised stone wall which separates them with the other world, they see shadows of people on the other side of the wall but they assume them to be an illusion, they have been there since birth and never seen the outside of the cave (Plato, 2011). The cave is a symbolic form of the modern-day world, which is full of obliviousness while the chained prisoners represent the people in that world whose perspective concerning life is shallow and ill-informed. The raised stonewall is the demarcation between the world full of ignorance and false perceptions and the people who love knowledge and responsive to change.

On the surface of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” it is just a simple piece, but the main purpose of the piece is to explain people living in a world of face value and having individuals break free from the main idea to create a new sense of what the world is truly about. In here, Plato uses the writing style of allegory to encompass the use of imagery and symbolism to explain his purpose. He also uses very clever dialogue with constant repetition to represent a bigger idea about the philosophy with chained up people living in a cave of shadows.

The "Allegory of the Cave" by Plato represents an extended metaphor that is to contrast the way in which we perceive and believe in what is reality. The thesis behind his allegory is the basic opinion that all we perceive are imperfect "reflections" of the ultimate Forms, which subsequently represent truth and reality. In his story, Plato establishes a cave in which prisoners are chained down and forced to look upon the front wall of the cave. In "Allegory of the Cave" there there are two elements to the story; the fictional metaphor of the prisoners, and the philosophical opinion in that the allegory is supposed to represent, hence presenting us with the allegory itself.

Plato describes the state of mind and state of living of the prisoners. He also notes that everyone is in a cave of darkness surrounding knowledge at some point or another. Plato’s