Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

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“Allegory of the Cave” is a conversational piece of work written by the Greek philosopher Plato as a fictional dialogue. It is a conversation between Socrates, Plato’s teacher, and Glaucon, Plato’s eldest brother. Plato wrote this book to show “how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened” (201). In many ways this piece of literature relates to my own personal education. In order for me to grasp concepts other than what I was being taught in the classroom, I had to break out of the “cave” to seek new opportunities and gain wisdom.
The “Allegory of the Cave” takes place in a dark cave with several prisoners who have been chained up since the day they were born, not knowing reality from idealism (Plato, 201). The Allegory represents the way individuals, or in …show more content…

This threatening feeling came from my education experience. In the schools that I have attended, the teachers always assigned us seats to sit in. During the lessons, if the teachers caught us looking around the room, we would get in trouble. It was kind of like how the prisoners were chained, not able to look anywhere else other than the cave walls in front of them. There was a certain curriculum and style that my teachers had to teach us. There was no room to learn anything outside of the lesson plan. I was always taught what others wanted me to learn. I was never able to learn concepts I wanted to be educated on. I had to be the one to free myself from the dark cave and into “reality” where I was able to seek new opportunities to be enlightened. On my own, I would read scholastic books to better educate myself while questioning everything I encountered. Once I was out of the “cave”, it took me a while to see all the other possibilities that were out there for me. As a result of my school experience, I am pursuing a career in nursing and could not have done it if I had not freed myself from the idealistic world of the

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