Allegory of the Cave Summary

Allegory of the Cave summary Platos Allegory of the Cave presents an enthralling concept that holds strong to this day. In the allegory three important compositions are illustrated that we have been conditi unrivalledd to a definite existentity since birth, we scorn being brought into the light of knowledge, and that we (as a society) reject anything that contradicts the notions of our preconceived reality. Clever Plato took these ideas and weaved them into an intriguing story of prisoners trapped in an underground cave, and then what happens when one of them was enLIGHTened.Surprisingly it applies in many ways to our society in modern times, nowadays no one forefronts what is veritable and what is false. Its exactly as Aldous Huxley feared, weve become lost in a sea of information which debilitates us to gain conscious understanding of information. Weve been raised in a society of dont question it which leaves the people vulnerable to the people carrying the statues across the go up, creating our sense of reality. When we are first brought into this cave at the get down of the allegory, it contains prisoners bound by chains in such a way as to force their heads to watch at this wall.It continues to tell us that theyve been this way since birth, and that a massive fire behind them that allows them to see shadows administer onto the wall, periodically people go be the fire with statues of people and creatures which cast shadows onto the wall and this shadow land is what the prisoners consider their reality. They are all content with this knowledge and nothing changes until one of the prisoners is set free. The prisoner, once hes set free, is blinded by the fire the moment he turns his head to face the fire.He looks jeopardize to the shadows which he identifies as reality, and looks back and forth between the fire and the wall until he finally accepts that the fire may be more real. His enlightenment is continued as hes strained up the stairs and for ced into the sunlight to view the real world. He begins slowly only identifying shadows at first and slowly progresses until hes able to identify the sun, and contemplate the sun as an idea and not just as an object.He continues learning about this new reality until he is fully convinced. retentiveness his former companions he grows full of pity for them, knowing that they dont share his knowledge of what is real and what is a mere shade of reality. With this thought in his head he heads back to the cave. Once hes back in the cave his eyes are full of darkness and hes unable to see things as clearly as his companions, for he had grown accustomed to the reality of light, because of this his former companions made fun of him.They knew he wasnt as adept to their reality, which they perceived as being the correctly one. Seeing what happened to their former companion when he was taken into the light, they decided that theyd never ascend because if they ascended theyd lose their sight of reality. With that the enlightened one left, knowing that his companions were lost in blissful ignorance, and he could do nothing to convince them for fear of death.