Allegory Of The Cave Essay

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My Experience with the Allegory of the Cave Imagine having lived in a cave for all of your life. To you, although it may be dark and dreary, it’s the only place that you have ever called home, so it’s comforting. Then picture escaping that cave into the world above. The sky is so colorful and bright compared to your damp and depressing home below, but at the same time it’s overwhelming and it scares you. This is how the Greek philosopher Plato described human ignorance. He pictured a scene where there were prisoners in a cave, all of whom were chained against a wall (Plato's The Allegory of the Cave: Meaning and Interpretation). There were also shadow puppeteers. They made shadow puppets using a lantern, the only light source that could be…show more content…
This was so they believed the shadows were actually there. It was only until one brave soul who would make up to the surface that he would make the great discovery; all the things in the cave was just a cover-up. The world above was a stark contrast to the world below. Great open skies and a refulgent sun soared overhead as the prisoner awed at the whole scene. After finding out the world created in the cave was just an illusion, the prisoner would feel obligated to share his experience with the others. However, if he were to tell his fellow prisoners the world they had been living in all their lives was fake, he would surely be killed. So the prisoner decided to simply come back into the cave where things would go on as usual, but he would always remember the time when he went up to the surface to the see the real world. This story was created to teach a lesson about how humans were reluctant to face reality. The cave was just a metaphorical symbol of the person’s ignorance and bliss. Once they hit the surface, they would finally understand how the world really worked. The choices they could make would be to either go back to their cave of safety but be scared by their experience, or to accept the

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