The Allegory Cave Book Report

In the Allegory of the Cave there are chained prisoners in cave who can only stare at the cave wall in front of them. At the back there is a long entrance with a staircase the width of the cave and a fire burning in the distance. They see only shadows projected in front of them from a raised platform and hear an echo that they attribute to what they observe. They talk about and name the shadows of objects they see before them. To them the truth are the shadows. Then one day one of the prisoners is released. He is told that what he saw before was an illusion. Once he is outside it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sun. First he observed the shadows of thing then their reflection and finally the actual object. Remembering his previous state he goes back to the cave and tries to explain that everything is an illusion but they laugh at him and think he’s crazy. They believe it best not to ascend and they choose to remain as they are. The cave represented opinion. The shadows that are cast on to the wall represented physical objects. The prisoners represented the common people (Welles).

An allegory is a kind of story in which writer intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface story. One of the most important allegories ever to be gifted to humankind is Allegory of the Cave. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is one of the most potent and pregnant of allegories that describe human condition in both its fallen and risen states. The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. It is also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave. It is written as a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon at the beginning of Book VII of The Republic.

Has someone ever looked at you and immediately disregard you for you are just because of your ethnicity? Have you ever done it someone? Racism is a huge culture issue that we have not only in America, but in other parts of the world, but it does not matter the color of one’s. What really matters is the character they have withheld inside but are not given a chance to express because someone didn’t even bother to give them a chance. This is idea comes from the book written by Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave” where in the book Socrates speaks of man being in a dark cave all their lives not realizing the truth until once they reach the end of the cave to see that the light is the truth. The truth is the reality of life.

“Allegory of the Cave”, written by Plato, is story that contrasts the differences between what is real and what is perceived. He opens with Glaucon talking to Socrates. He has Glaucon imagine what it would be like to be chained down in a cave, not able to see anything other than what is in front of him. He tells a story of men that were trapped in a cave and were prisoners to the truth. These prisoners have only seen shadows. But because of their ignorance, these slaves to the cave believe that the shadows are real. The story goes on to say that one of the men has been dragged out of the cave. He is not happy to see the real world, yet upset because he is being taken

In his allegory of the cave, Plato describes a scenario in which chained-up prisoners in a cave understand the reality of their world by observing the shadows on a cave wall. Unable to turn around, what seems to be reality are but cast shadows of puppets meant to deceive the prisoners. In the allegory, a prisoner is released from his chains and allowed to leave the cave. On his way out, he sees the fire, he sees the puppets, and then he sees the sun. Blinded by the sunlight, he could only stare down to view the shadows cast onto the floor. He gradually looks up to see the reflections of objects and people in the water and then the objects and people themselves. Angered and aware of reality, the freed prisoner begins to understand illusion

The Allegory of the Cave or also known as, Myth of the Cave, is a good example of explaining the feature of the way people think. It is a concept that demonstrates how humans are fearful of change and what they don’t know. Plato says that men are living in an underground cave and it is a situation. The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. Plato talks about being free, everyday life, knowledge, and essentially what he wrote to be true. I think that he was very unique with his writings because there are so many ways to look at the world and his way was just one. He was educated highly and is recognized as a philosopher to this day.

Book VI further supports Socrates’ claim that the philosophers are not in fact supremely virtuous (485 a-487 a). This is important because in Book IX Socrates discusses at length how the just are virtuous and that being both of these things is what leads to the ultimate good and happiness. Furthermore, this book provides another advocacy for the goodness of philosophy in and of itself.

The allegory of the cave in the beginning of the book seven is a discussion between Socrates and Plato’s half-brother Glaucon. In the story, Plato speaks of prisoners chained in a cave looking straight ahead at the wall with it facing in only one direction. Behind the prisoners remains a fire creating shadows of what people want to show to them. One could imagine that it is a little spectacle for the prisoners to admire given their isolation. Supposedly, the play of shadows was all that they know of their world. Interpreting this story, readers can infer the population consisted of prisoners and the cave was the society.

Truth is an abstract concept by which mankind bases all knowledge. It is information that we believe to be indisputably and undeniably accurate. Yet how can we ever prove such information to be true? What about the “truths” that cannot be measured? To insist that something is objectively true is to maintain that it is always true outside of one’s beliefs or perception. However, our experiences, perceptions, and emotions all differ from those of others, and yet we still know them to be a definite truth. That is because in reality, all of the apparent truths that we know, or believe to know, are completely subjective.

Imagine your whole life you have been a slave, born into bondage. In a prison, that you were unaware existed in your present ideal of reality. A prison for your mind, bonded by illusions to control you from the truth. The truth of the matter being the reality, in which you believe to live in, does not exist. Just as the prisoners of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” are blind from true reality in the same way the human population in the movie “The Matrix” written by the Wachowski brothers.

My theme for the signature essay is Natures connection with Humans. I will be using two texts from my Class, two text that truly caught my interest during this semester. The first one being Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the other one being Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, two very outstanding writers of their time. Nature as stated is he phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. The Allegory of the Cave written by famous philosopher Plato is about a gathering of people held in captivity.

By the time The Republic was written the term had a new meaning. Instead of the method previously described, it was now used to describe what something is. “The Republic stresses that true dialectic is performed by thinking solely of the abstract and nonsensible realm of forms; it requires that reason secure an unhypothetical first principle (the Good) and then derive other results in light of it” (Meinwald). In later dialogues like Parmenides, dialectic is used to understand forms in the proper manner.

As pointed out in "The Allegory Of The Cave," the Freed Man might even feel that what he was seeing now was the illusion and the shadows on the wall were actually more real. Like Cypher tells Trinity, "I think the matrix can be more real than this

In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato argues that what we believe or see as the reality is often just a shadow of it. We seek the truth and find our own understanding. Angela Carter expresses her own interpretation of the truth in “The Company of Wolves,” by retelling the famous fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” In her version of the tale, the Little Red is no longer just an innocent and pure little girl who needs to be protected by others. Instead, she is a mature woman who knows how to use her sexuality to protect herself.

In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”, could it be considered presumptuous to assume that a large demographic will adhere or bend to the perspective of one individual?