Process Essay: The Myth Of The Cave

In Plato’s allegory of the Cave, he describes how prisoners are chained in cave and they can only see what’s in front of them. They can’t even see themselves or the people besides them, the only thing visible to them are the shadows of the people carrying objects and the animals. The shadows were the only things that the prisoners knew. One of the prisoners breaks free and leaves the cave. As he goes into the real world he is blinded by the bright light and the reality of life. The prisoner saw that the life he onced lived was a lie. We are blinded by the lies and things we want to believe. If we were to see the truth, then we would return to tell the others, but they would not believe us.

Because of how we live, true reality is not obvious to most of us. However, we mistake what we see and hear for reality and truth. This is the basic premise for Plato抯 Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners sit in a cave, chained down, watching images cast on the wall in front of them. They accept these views as reality and they are unable to grasp their overall situation: the cave and images are a ruse, a mere shadow show orchestrated for them by unseen men. At some point, a prisoner is set free and is forced to see the situation inside the cave. Initially, one does not want to give up the security of his or her familiar reality; the person has to be dragged past the fire and up the entranceway. This is a

Through time, his knowledge and body adjusted; including his eyesight to the real world. He returned to the cave to share his realization to the rest of the prisoners. However, with his body and eyesight calibrated for the real world, he was unable to see and view shadows in the cave properly. The rest of the prisoners then concluded that his exploration affected him, viewed him as idiotic and refused to be freed from the cave. In my view, Plato’s message here is how people are comfortable with their own point of view; belief system that they prefer to stay behind that belief or viewpoint as opposed to exploring the possibility of the real truth.

In the parable, “Allegory of the Cave,” the literal action of being blinded can best be summed up as an effect on the freed prisoner caused by the sudden environmental change the prisoner passes via each case. The first case demonstrated when the prisoner is freed, and he is literally blinded by the removal of darkness from his regular environment. The second case being the reciprocal of the first, in which the sudden change from a life of light is removed and the prisoner is once again forced to adapt to a somewhat unfamiliar environment, darkness. By the way of allegory, Plato goes on to explain that because the prisoners could only see a limited degree of life, they were trapped and deprived of certain fruits the world has to offer. On the flip side, once the prisoner is released and then brought back to his original state, he once again finds himself face to face with the all too familiar feeling of blindness. This blindness in turn creates a feeling humbleness that is equally as important as the first case. The prisoner’s intellectual journey opens up a philosophical approach to finding truth and wisdom that all men should pursue in the name of the greater good.

Plato’s philosophy is that most people are happy in a world of shadows, whereas, Sagan claims that people are “highly motivated to find truth.” Although both Sagan and Plato make excellent points for their case, Plato’s view of humans’ quests for the truth makes a better case. “The Cave” can easily be compared to daily dealings with people might view as ignorant. When it comes to religion, politics, and science, there is always a debate with opposing views. Each person involved believes they are superior to the opposition. Plato discusses this towards the end, when the freed man reenters the cave with eyes that are blinded because they had gotten used to the sun. The freed man represents someone who has realized something other than what they were told. When the freed man tells the prisoners about what he saw out of the cave, he is ridiculed. Their argument for refusing to get released to enter to outside world is “Would they not let him know that he had gone up but only in order to come back down into the cave with his eyes ruined -- and thus it certainly does not pay to go up.” (Plato 517 a7) The prisoners are fine with staying in the cave because that’s all they know and they are happy with it. In life, this can be seen as people who refuse to think other than what they are taught, as they prefer to stay in a bubble or “cave.”

While passing the opening these objects from the outside world project echoes and shadows that the prisoners hear and see. The prisoners then begin to name these shadows and echoes and believe this to be what the world is since they are so defined. One day, one of the prisoners is freed from his chains and he explores outside of the cave. When he first leaves he is blinded by the light from the sun, and turns away from the light however his former reality is less clear to him now. So he ventures out into the world, the light disorientates him at first. He is then told that the objects that are around him are real and that the shadows that he was so familiar and believed were real, were simply reflections. This confused him since the objects reflections or shadows were more clear to him. However slowly his eyes begin to adjust and he is able to look at reflections in the water, then at the objects themselves and finally at the sun itself which illuminated everything. Having discovered this new reality he goes back to the cave to enlighten his fellow prisoners of this new world, but when arriving his eyes no longer adjusted to the darkness can not see the former shadows as clearly. The prisoners because of his loss of clarity think that he has become stupid or blind from his release since he can not see his former reality anymore. They refuse to allow him to free them or take them out of the cave.

Suppose one of them were let loose, and suddenly compelled to stand up and turn his head and look and walk toward the fire; all these actions would be painful and he would be too dazzled to see properly the objects of which he used to see the shadows. What do you think he would say if he was told that what he used to see was so much empty nonsense and that he was now nearer reality and seeing more correctly… Don’t you think he would be at a loss, and think that what he used to see was far truer than the objects now being pointed out to him..’ ” (Myth of the Cave). Socrates then asks the person he is speaking to whether or not the slave experiencing this revelation would be startled and upset. The person agrees and Socrates continues, “ ‘And if he were made to look directly at the light of the fire, it would hurt his yes and he would turn back and retreat to the things which he could see properly, which he would think really clearer than the things being shown him…. [if] he were forced dragged up the steep and rugged ascent and not let go till he had been dragged out into the sunlight, the process would be a painful one, to which he would much object…’ ” (Myth of the Cave).

they are only able to see nothing but shadowy figures move on the wall of the cave. They perceive that as their true reality. A prisoner breaks free from his shackles and is blinded by the light of the sun. He realized that his reality in the cave was not real, he sees people and understands what reality is now. The prisoner goes back to explain to the others what he has seen but they don’t believe him.

The man ran up the hill towards the light and the end of the cave where he was temporarily blinded because he was used to the darkness inside of the cave. Of course this is all very confusing to him and maybe even angers him because he does not understand what he is seeing. Eventually this man will gain knowledge of the world and everything in it, from the shadows of the objects he saw on the wall of the cave all the way up to how the sun helps the earth. He will see that was he was made to see and understand was not reality but just was he was made to believe. This freed man now pities the other prisoners that are still inside the cave because he realizes how wrong they were about everything they know. Plato describes how if the freed prisoner were to go back to the cave and tell the others what he has seen that they would criticize him, laugh at him and tell him he would have been better off if he had never escaped. They even go as far to say that if another person were to be released that they should be caught and killed so as to not follow the same fate as the released prisoner.

The “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato represents the differences in the way we perceive reality and what we believe is real. In his story, Plato starts by saying that in a cave, there are prisoners chained down and are forced to look at a wall. The prisoners are unable to turn their heads to see what is going on behind them and are completely bound to the floor. Behind the prisoners, puppeteers hide and cast shadows on the wall in line with the prisoners’ sight, thus giving the prisoners their only sense of reality. What happens in the passage is not told from the prisoners’ point of view but is actually a conversation held between Socrates and Glaucon (Plato’s brother).

Allegory the cave Don’t be afraid to change. You may lose something good but you may gain something better. My thought is that people have a hard time adapting to change due to the sacrifices one must face. Throughout most of my life I’ve always struggled with my sexuality and how I thought it would have a negative impacted in my life, however as I got older I was torn within my own thoughts. A part of me wanted me to be the man I am today on the other hand I was terrified because of the horror stories people faced for being who they were.

After more time he is able to see things themselves and look at the moon and starts and finally the actual sun. His time outside of the cave has opened his eyes to things he never knew existed, at this time he remembered his fellow comrades in the cave. An insert from “The Allegory of the Cave” says, “Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable?” (Plato). He then travels back into the cave to spread his knowledge.

How can you prove your world is real, rather than an intentionally constructed model? The short story “The Allegory of the Cave” in Plato’s book The Republic and the movie The Matrix by The Wachowskis, both revolve around the philosophical idea of truth and illustrate the processes of people leaving their false worlds to experience the reality. Although the protagonist from these two pieces of work have different experiences in their journeys, both stories convey an underlying idea ———— nothing is absolute real or virtual and it is individual’s perceptions that shape their own realties.

"The shadowy environment of the cave symbolizes for Plato the physical world of appearances. Escape into the sun-filled setting outside the cave symbolizes the transition to the real world, the world of full and perfect being, the world of Forms, which is the proper object of knowledge" (Encarta). In other words, a person who has intellectual insights is often misunderstood by those who will not accept the fact that things may not be as they appear. Also, those things that the unenlightened person is apt to believe, may only be what the person wants to believe and not what is actually the case. Plato indicates that we must be willing to accept that there may be an underlying meaning to things which only the enlightened may see.

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