Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” in the Cave
In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato describes the cave as very dark with chained people inside and a wall where they can only see shadow illusions, which they believe is reality. Outside the cave, there is “light” and “truth.” One chained person is released into the “light,” which is uncomfortable at first, because of how bright the “light” or “truth” is however, once he adjusts, he realizes the outer world is the “truth” or reality and the cave is a shadow of reality. He pities the ones in the cave, still lost in the darkness yet, when he tries to make them see reality, their ignorance overpowers them and they kill the enlightened one out of fear and confusion. This is the kind of society, full of puppet-handlers, the narrator Sylvia in “The Lesson” dwells in and the author, Toni Cade Bambara, depicts Sylvia as being freed from the chains of ignorant society. Bambara’s released prisoner, Miss Moore, is the one to free Sylvia and the other chained prisoners and exposes them to the “light,” which is the unequal distribution of wealth and the “truth,” which is educating youth on economic inequality so the freed prisoners can learn to change their society’s shadow of reality.
The narrator Sylvia and the children in her impoverished neighborhood are prisoners in a dark cave, which is the society that encompasses ignorance and puppet-handlers. “The Lesson” begins with Sylvia as she talks condescendingly about her neighborhood of Harlem, New York: “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. Quite naturally we laughed at her… And we kinda ha...
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...lieved in their shadow of reality. However, once released prisoner Miss Moore arrives into Sylvia’s neighborhood, everything changes. Coupled with Miss Moore’s education and power is the “light” and “truth” Bambara wants to display. Miss Moore articulates the “light” to all the chained prisoners, but like in “The Allegory of the Cave,” many are afraid and bewildered by the “light,” so they reject being enlightened. However the “light” reaches Sylvia, which causes a soul-shattering experience, but ultimately releases her from her chains. Once freed from the dark cave and its wall of illusions, Sylvia is able to communicate the “light” to the other chained prisoners in her society as well. This allows her to express Bambara’s “truth,” which is educating youth on the unequal distribution of wealth, so they can learn to change their society’s shadow of truth.
The way a person is taught from a young age often times affects his or her values and perceptions throughout their life. A person is taught how to think and what to think about but is rarely given the choice of how to perceive this information. This can be seen in Plato 's “Allegory of the Cave,” “Learning to Read and Write,” by Frederick Douglass and the speech, “This is Water” by David Wallace. Each of the three pieces talks about characters being born into enslavement either hypothetically or literally. Being born into enslavement resulted in each of them to seek for freedom in different ways. Only knowing one way to see and think due to the environment arises self-centered thoughts by the protagonist.
Developing character is something that comes with time. I believe that there are three major things that effect how people develop their character—where they are from, which includes their financial status; how they are raised; and the character of the people that have had the most influence on their lives. Sylvia, in Toni Cade Bambara’s "The Lesson," is very much influenced by all of these factors. Sylvia’s living in the slums and being poor makes her defensive and judgmental. Her parents not being around much leaves her without the attention and discipline that children need to develop to their fullest. Lastly, her friends and Miss Moore also have a great influence on how Sylvia thinks and acts, and lead Sylvia to be observant but also angry and stubborn. All of these characteristics not only determine Sylvia’s personality, but also are the basis for why I think Sylvia will not apply Miss Moore’s lesson.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave describes ignorance and the process of enlightenment. The cave symbolizes a prison for the mind. Cave dwellers only know of the one reality presented in the cave, yet it is not reality at all. The cave dwellers are ignorant, knowing only one way and not trying to broaden their minds. Plato uses chains and shackles to represent the mental bondage of the cave dwellers. In spite of the bondage, few minds are able to break free of ...
The irrational concept of the education has been influenced moral principles concerning what is good for a society as well as for an individual; however, the understanding of the intrinsic nature of the education removes the darkness of beliefs, which Plato calls prisoners’ shadows in his writing The Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a dialogue between Glaucon and Socrates. Although “The Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” was written thousands of years ago, Plato’s depiction of the true education is a wakeup call for our humanity to admit the acquisition of knowledge with circumspection. The truth often relies on a mistaking understanding of sight or shadow according to Plato; the truth regularly relies on prejudice which makes an individual a prisoner, and the discovery of new truth often encounters hostility. A close analysis of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave allows us to view the education as not a way to transfer knowledge, but a way to transform
Both authors make a point of showing the narrow-mindedness of humans by nature. In “Allegory of the Cave”, the prisoners believed that the shadows they were seeing were reality, with nothing more to it. The comfort of the said perceived, and therefore the fear of the unrecognized outside world would end in the prisoner being forced to climb the steep ascent of the cave and step outside int...
...siting F.A.O. Schwarz awakens in Sylvia an internal struggle she has never felt, and through criticizing Miss Moore, Sylvia distances herself from realizing her poverty. In her responses to the toys, their prices, and the unseen people who buy them, it is evident that Sylvia is confronting the truth of Miss Moore's lesson. As Sylvia begins to understand social inequality, the realization of her own disadvantage makes her angry. For Sylvia, achieving class consciousness is a painful enlightenment. For her to accept that she is underprivileged is shameful for her, and Sylvia would rather deny it than admit a wound to her pride: "ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin" (312).
One of Miss Moore's defining qualities is her intelligence. Her academic skills and self-presentation is noticeable through her college degree and use of “proper speech” (Bambara, 385). Miss Moore also makes her intelligence evident from the methods she uses to teach Sylvia and the other children. Unlike planting them in classrooms, she takes them out on trips to show them the real world. Despite all the insults she receives from th...
The Plato’s Cave allegory is about prisoners that are chained in a cave since birth, that believe life in one state of reality. This was forced upon them. They cannot turn to see anything behind them because their necks were chained. The only thing they can see is the wall in the cave. Behind them was a burning fire. In between the fire and the prisoners was a parapet. The puppeteers hold up objects that cause shadows on the only wall the prisoners can see. They believe the shadows are reality. They would talk about the shadows as if they were the real objects. A prisoner was taken from what he believes is his home, his chains, and dragged outside as he was kicking and screaming, and blinded by the sun’s
In Book VII of The Republic, Plato tells a story entitled "The Allegory Of The Cave." He begins the story by describing a dark underground cave where a group of people are sitting in one long row with their backs to the cave's entrance. Chained to their chairs from an early age, all the humans can see is the distant cave wall in from of them. Their view of reality is soley based upon this limited view of the cave which but is a poor copy of the real world.
Plato’s cave had chained prisoners and that was the only life they ever knew. They couldn’t move their heads, and the only objects they could see from the outside world were the casted shadows created by the fire. They saw the truth from the shadows, but they were distorted. What they were seeing was only one side of the truth, not the whole thing. When one of the prisoners was free to go, he was forced to be dragged out of the cave. It
Plato's Allegory of a Cave is a story about prisoners that are chained underground, who can not see anything except for shadows caste on a wall by a fire. The only thing that these prisoners can see is the shadows of people. Eventually, one of the prisoners breaks free of the chain and ventures out into the real world. In the real world the freed prisoner discovers that the shadows in the cave are created from light diverge off people. He recognizes there is a whole new world filled with light. The freed prisoner is very confused and blinded by the light so he decides to return to the cave. When the prisoner returns to the cave, he shares what he saw in the real world with the other prisoners. The remaining prisoners treat the freed prisoner like he is crazy and they tell the freed prisoner that the real world does not exist. The prisoners in the cave do not believe in the real world because the cave is all that they know exists.
To begin with, the reader gets a sense of Sylvia's personality in the beginning of the story as she talks about Miss Moore. Miss Moore is not the typical black woman in the neighborhood. She is well educated and speaks well. She has climbed up against the odds in a time where it was almost unheard of for a black woman to go to college. She is a role model for the children who encourages them to get more out of life. Sylvia's opinion of her is not one of fondness. She says that she hates Miss Moore as much as the "winos who pissed on our handball walls and stand up on our hallways and stairs so you couldn't halfway play hide and seek without a god damn mask”(357). By comparing the hatred with something she enjoys, we get to see what a child does in the slums for amusement. Sylvia feels t...
In "The Allegory of the Cave," prisoners in a cave are forced to watch shadows as people behind them are forced to accept these shadows as reality -- "To them... the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. One prisoner, however, is released, and stumbles into the real world, containing more depth and complexity than they had ever known. At first, the prisoner will be pained at the bright, piercing light, but will eventually recover. According to Plato, the freed prisoner is then obligated to return to the shadows of the cave, to inform the shackled prisoners left behind of the real world. The prisoners, however, will not believe the freed prisoner, and may even go as afra s to kill him for such "lies" contrary to their "reality." The pursuit of the truth is, therefor, a painstaking but rewarding process. According to Plato, the physical world is a world of sight, one that lacks meaning if left alone. Only those who manage to break into the sunlight from the cave will ascend to the intellectual world. The prisoners in the shadows only know of the dull physical world, while those who ascend into the sunlight learn of the spiritual world, and are exposed to the first hints of truth. The soul ascends upward into the realm of goodness and of the truth, where "... souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell.." The pursuit of goodness and of the truth, then, improves the soul, as the soul desires to be elevated to a higher state of knowledge and morality. Caring for the self and the soul involves freeing the shackles of the physical world and ascending to the "... world of knowledge... the universal author of all things beautiful and right... and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual..." The soul yearns to dwell in a world of morality and knowledge, and only the pursuit of
Plato's allegory of the cave is a metaphysical illustration of the philosopher’s view of the humanity. We are represented by the prisoners, who are mired and held captive by an extremely limited view of the world, and prevented by their chains from viewing the actual Truth of existence. We are each locked up in our own worldview, living our lives unknowingly in the shadow of actual truth. Having nothing else to rely upon but our meager eyesight and hearing, capable of only believing in shadows and whispering disembodied voices, once exposed to truth, it is blinding to us. We are dazzled and disoriented, afraid of the glaring sight that has been so rudely forced upon us.
The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. He sees it as what happens when someone is educated to the level of philosopher. He contends that they must "go back into the cave" or return to the everyday world of politics, greed and power struggles. The Allegory also attacks people who rely upon or are slaves to their senses. The chains that bind the prisoners are the senses. The fun of the allegory is to try to put all the details of the cave into your interpretation. In other words, what are the models the guards carry? the fire? the struggle out of the cave? the sunlight? the shadows on the cave wall? Socrates, in Book VII of The Republic, just after the allegory told us that the cave was our world and the fire was our sun. He said the path of the prisoner was our soul's ascent to knowledge or enlightenment. He equated our world of sight with the intellect's world of opinion. Both were at the bottom of the ladder of knowledge. Our world of sight allows us to "see" things that are not real, such as parallel lines and perfect circles. He calls this higher understanding the world "abstract Reality" or the Intelligeble world. He equates this abstract reality with the knowledge that comes from reasoning and finally understanding. On the physical side, our world of sight, the stages of growth are first recognition of images (the shadows on the cave wall) then the recognition of objects (the models the guards carry) To understand abstract reality requires the understanding of mathematics and finally the forms or the Ideals of all things (the world outside the cave). But our understanding of the physical world is mirrored in our minds by our ways of thinking. First comes imagination (Socrates thought little of creativity), then our unfounded but real beliefs. Opinion gives way to knowledge through reasoning (learned though mathematics). Finally, the realization of the forms is mirrored by the level of Understanding in the Ways of Thinking. The key to the struggle for knowledge is the reasoning skills acquired through mathematics as they are applied to understanding ourselves. The shadows on the cave wall change continually and are of little worth, but the reality out side the cave never changes and that makes it important.