Analysis Of Socrates Allegory Of The Cave

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A great example being a critical thinker is it requires people to gain knowledge and consider all possibilities. This is well demonstrated in “Allegory of the Cave”. When Socrates says; “And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?”(1). Glaucon, responds with an immediate, certain answer. Socrates, who presents him with the story about this allegory, is trying to turn his student into a critical thinker by giving him new information to try to give him different ideas and perspectives about the world. This also happens to the man mentioned in the allegory itself, “When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at …show more content…
Once he finally sees these “realities”, he understands that there is so much more than just the cave and the shadows inside of it. His perspective changes on the cave and he then pities the others who are still locked inside, “And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change and pity them?” (2). All of the new information that he has gained from looking into the light and coming out of the cave has caused him to not even associate himself with the other prisoners, and instead feel bad for them because they do not know where they are or what situation they are in. The man in the allegory does not show good qualities of a critical thinker because while he has a changed perspective, he can no longer return to the previous state of ignorance he was once in because he now knows the …show more content…
A good way of becoming a critical thinker is not only having different perspectives, but also applying them. Similar to the roommate in, The Danger of a Single Story, the main character here thinks that just because someone is black, they cannot think for themselves. While the main female character is presented with many learning opportunities that would change the way she thought, she does not seem to take any of them into consideration. In the first scene the woman is at a train station trying to get to her train on time and she runs past many homeless people, who are primarily African American. A man bumps into her who is wearing a suit and happens to be black and she drops all of the things in her purse. He attempts to help her but she insists that she doesn’t need any help, “Stop it! Stop it! You’re going to make me miss my train!”. The rejection of his help seems to stem from the fact that he is African American and while he may be wearing a suit, he is just another black man on the street. She does end up missing the train begins to cry because of it. This is very odd considering that all she did was miss a train when she can just take another one, but there are people with much worse circumstances around her. The woman meets one of these people later inside the coffee shop when she accuses him of eating her salad, saying, “That’s my salad!”. Eventually she eats some of his salad and they seem to
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