In addition to the chained people, there are other people in the cave. Plato refers to them as the puppet-handlers and they are the ones holding those in the cave captive. (It is important to realize that the prisoners do not realize this--in fact, the prisoners do not even realize that they are being held captive since this existence is all they have ever known.) Walking behind the prisoners, the puppet-handlers hold up various objects found in the real world. Due to a fire that is burning the mouth of the cave, the prisoners are able to see the objects and each other only as distorted, flickering shadows on the cavern wall in front of them.
These shadows are the only action that they ever see. They can only talk to the surrounding prisoners, and watch the puppet show on the wall in front of them. Naturally, the prisoners come to believe that the shadows on the wall in front of them are reality. The second level of the cave is where a prisoner is released of the chains and is forced to look at the light of the fire behind him. The light hurts his eyes, and after a moment of pain and confusion he sees the statues on the partial wall in front of him.
We finally reached the cave and everyone there gathered round to watch. The men were ready to open the cave, my cave, or at least it used to be my cave. As they entered the cave, I remembered when I last saw and spoke to Marthe. As I was thinking of her, I also thought of when I touched her hand in the cave. Thinking of her so much quite upset me.
It can be a nearly impossible task for anyone to break away from how they have been raised and from the people who have raised them. A person would not only need to have motivation, but an iron will. They would need to be able to be patient, for it would take a large amount of time to be able to pull their selves away from the life that they were born into, and to create for their selves a new life. All of this relies on the multiple factors that can effect a person from being able to leave their old lifestyle and create a better one for them to live in. It can be a nearly impossible task for anyone to break away from how they were raised and from who had raised them.
The allegory of the cave starts off with Plato telling his audience to imagine that they are prisoners in a cave. He tells them that they are chained up to some large rocks and that their arms, legs, and head are tied so that they can only look at the stonewall directly
“These prisoners represent the majority of man, the multitude of people who remain all their lives in a state of ignorance beholding only shadows of reality and hearing only echo’s of the truth” (F. Coplesto, 1985, pg 161). The prisoners represent us – humankind. Plato attempts to alert humans to the possibility that our senses may be deceiving us and that a greater reality exists in the light of truth – out side the cave and our own knowledge. For most of us this reality is beyond our sight and only an extraordinary life-changing event may give us a chance to view this truth – this new reality. The cave challenges individuals to reflect on the possibility that there is a reality... ... middle of paper ... ...n there senses and search for truth.
True reality is not obvious to most of us. We mistake what we see and hear for reality and truth. This is the basic premise for Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners sit in a cave, 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 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.
Aristotle had argued “ It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” meaning that even though a person can be educated and have their own thought, they are able to listen and respect another person thought and opinion. However in the book The Allegory of The Cave written by Plato and was translated by Thomas Sheehan is quite the opposite. The book is about people who are chained up in a cave and they could see shadows. The shadows are created by a fire that is in the cave and also their shadows are reflected on a wall that is at a certain height. As a result, those shadows became their own reality.
In conclusion, Socrates 's (and Plato 's) point is that, once we understand what reality is, it is the job of the informed to lead the ignorant 'out of the cave ' and into true knowledge. This means, of course, that those who still are uninformed will resist since, after all, the cave is all they 've ever known. But, this doesn 't change the obligation of the enlightened philosopher to try (and keep trying) to help his fellow
E.M Forster’s “The Machine Stops” draws a comparison to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. Just like the prisoners, they do not get to see and feel the people or objects. They used ‘The Machine’ as a tool to experience reality. We live in an age of deception today where everyone has their own truth, or where other people, and you, convince yourself that something is true. In the allegory of the cave, when one of the prisoners left, and later came back to tell the others what he had seen, they decided to believe their own version of the truth, just like Vashti and her son Kuno.