Allegory of the Cave

‘Allegory’, is a word used to describe the narrative story of an object, picture, or idea, a story which can be a moral lesson or a political one.

Plato in his book, The Republic, demonstrates human perception exists without anyone being aware of the existence of Forms.

The allegory of the cave is a conversation between Socrates and Plato’s brother. In the dialogue, Socrates asked Glaucon to imagine a cave. In the cave, a few people are chained as prisoners. They cannot move their head or turn around and they can only look in front of them: a stone wall. Behind them exists a fire and a roadway in which puppeteers display objects. The light of fire casts a shadow on objects on the stone wall. The sounds prisoners can hear are the echoes from the cave. But they can never turn back to see shadows portraying what object. All their life, they have been in a cave. So, all their life they believe shadow is reality.

One day, one of the prisoners set off and when he sees the reality, it drives him crazy. He is unable to comprehend the given scene. He sees a light out of the cave, he goes there and is blinded by light as he has always been in a dark cave. At first, he doesn’t believe it’s true but after few days outside the cave, in light of the world he is amazed and thinks foolish of himself. He believe that shadows are reality and that the world outside the cave was not real, but now as he’s been exposed to reality he is thankful. He is pity for the people who were always free and couldn’t be thankful for their freedom. So he decided now to free his fellows in the cave. But this time, he enters the cave and is blinded by the darkness as once he was by the light. His friends seem and think he has got mad. He then gathers himself and tells them the truth but the others now believe he has gone crazy. They attack him but he runs away out of cave and knows he cannot help them.

We all have been there; in that one cave of darkness where we believe it was reality, the last stand. As we grew up, our beliefsss changed, our vision of seeing the world. Perhaps we lost something, something we loved or owned. Our life experiences are like the light which first causes us to crumble but as we explore it, we accept it. But people around don’t. We might tell them the importance of the days they are living, but they are like those prisoners who think we are fools, we had abonden them. They have to live their own life. We can not do anything about it. Just accept the fact we can not help or change them, just watch them.