Comparing Plato's Allegory Of The Cave And Inception
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Allegory of the Cave and Inception “Let me show you in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened” (Plato 292). In his allegory, Plato uses the characters and events to represent abstract ideas, and help his audience understand the difference between the intelligible world and the visible world. This is similar to the plot of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, where they contrast the world we know and the dream world. The film Inception mirrors and diverges from Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave through the use of the belief in a false reality and the difficulties that the characters must overcome to fully understand the “form of the good.” “How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” (293). Plato is referring to the beings that are locked in the cave, these people are trapped in the cave of their own bodies and what they consider sight. They believe that the reflections that they see from the cave are the real world, when in reality it is just what they know. This is…show more content… In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato discusses the people who are enlightened and have seen the form of the good. He attempts to assist the audience in becoming enlightened and basing their ideas, not off senses but off intellect. He states multiple times, that he rather live in a world of suffering than to live in this “false reality.” This is similar to when Cobb has to choose between staying constantly in the dream world with Mal, and planting the idea into her brain. He believed that using inception on his own wife would be better than to be stuck in this world of falseness forever. The topic of enlightenment it is not easy to overcome this, and to open up to suffering when there is an easier way, but without doing so, and not having the “perfect” and simple life, the human beings in both works would never fully understand the difference between the two