Prisoners In Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

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In Plato’s the Allegory of the Cave, prisoners have stayed in this dark cave since their childhood. They just have a little bit of light from the entrance of the cave; and their legs and necks have been chained, so that they cannot walk around or even move their heads, just facing the wall in front of them. The dark cave is representing our own personal world, the prisoners are representing us, the people. The chains represent as the limits that keep us in one place, such as lack of knowledge. This can be described as we are born and grow up in our own world, because there are some limits which have blocked us; such as the laggard living conditions and lack of education. This has caused someone of us be short sighted and have shallow…show more content…
Because the chain has locked the prisoners in place, which made them unable to move their heads, the restricted vision has made them think the shadows are the real things. The shadows represent the superficial knowledge we been told, just knowing the basic definitions and we think we fully understand these things. The puppeteers are represented as the people who are teaching us the ideas about the world, like our parents and elders. Received the ideas and knowledge from others, we have been locked in our own world, we only believe in what we know and don’t think those are 100% true. Because we don’t have the idea to think about outside of the cave, just like to stay in this small space. We would presume what we know to be true, is…show more content…
However, he’s facing a new problem: his eyes are full of blackness, he is unable to see anything at that moment. So he cannot even recognize what is the real thing. He needs a long time to get accustomed in order to see the things and the world outside the cave. The first thing that is easy to see are the shadows, then is the reflection of things which appeared in the water. Lastly, he would see what reality of the real things is. This is how we act when seeking for knowledge, because we don’t have the ability to judge what is real and what is fake; like the prisoner who can’t see when just out of darkness faces the light. Therefore, we need criterion to help us. If not, we could miss the truth which passed by. Then study is the process of learning to adapt the challenges. Once we come to fruition, which is worth of what we have
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