Analysis Of The Allegory Of The Cave By Plato

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In the article “The Allegory of the Cave,” the author Plato emphasizes the importance and necessity to achieve a higher understanding, rather than remaining in ignorance. The story starts as a conversation between his brother and mentor. The mentor, Socrates, begins to describe a group of people who have lived their entire lives chained to a wall facing the back end of a cave. The prisoners are bound by chains on their necks which makes them unable to look around the cave. Behind the prisoners is a large fire, however between the fire and the prisoners was a raised walkway with a low wall. The people walk behind the wall so their bodies do not cast shadows for the prisoners to see. The prisoners can only see the objects the people carry. The prisoners cannot see anything behind them and are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. These shadows became the prisoner’s only sense of reality. Plato then says that one of the prisoners has been freed, forcing him to turn and see the fire. The light hurts his eyes and makes it hard for him to see the objects that are casting the shadows. At first the freed prisoner would turn away and run back to what he can see and …show more content…
Socrates believe this would cause the freed prisoner to want to bring others that were in his old situation out of the darkness and into the sunlight. The returning prisoner’s eyes would be accustomed to the light of the sun, would now be unable to see when he re-enters the cave. The other prisoners would think that the man’s blindness was caused from his time spent outside the cave. This filled the prisoners with fear and made them believe that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates ends the story by concluding that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the

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