Allegory Of The Cave By Plato

Brief Summary

In this Allegory of the cave written by Plato it tells about how people react to instances in life. The story starts out by telling us to picture people “ having their legs and necks fettered from childhood”(1), so that they cannot move and are only able to see the puppets shown throughout the fire. He goes to point out that if all they can see are these shadows of objects that those said objects must seem like the real ones to the prisoners. So these prisoners would then consider any sounds and shadows that they see or hear to be reality. Consider one prisoner being released from his shackles and then standing up suddenly but feeling pain and dizziness when looking at the light. He would be unable to make out the objects of
which he only knew the shadows of. He would then need a period of habituation to get used to the light and his new reality. This prisoner would then look at the sun and be able to tell that it causes the seasons and “is in some sort the cause of all these things that they had seen.”(2) So if he went back and released the other prisoners and told them that the shadows were not the real objects. Would this not create laughter and cause the prisoners in which he is attempting to release to kill him? In this “Allegory of the cave” Plato is trying to tell us that there are points in time in our life when we must be freed from our “fetters”(2) and see what the truth is.

Response to Content

I believe that everybody in their life has to be freed from their “fetters”(1) at least once.
There will always need to be a period of habituation to become accepting of this new truth that has been learned. I would expect that when this person is released from their shackles their situation would be equivalent to that of a midlife crisis. There would be drastic changes and this person would return to tell their old friends about their new realization, but these friends would then shun them. The friends would not want to be associated with this person because they do not want to released from their “fetters.”(1) I believe that this could relate to people jumping up in classes (i.e. from low class to high class) because if they become rich and their friends are still poor it could cause them to not be friends any longer. Such as the upper class person coming down to teach the lower class how to make money, but the lower class believing that they are just being snooty and rich and shunning the upper class person. I also believe that if I was the prisoner being released from the cave I would not ever gone back to tell the others of the world. I would have dealt with this completely differently and built a life for myself and try to forget about the cave all together. However I do believe that the allegory of the cave can be used in the reference of having a bad job. People do not realize how unhappy they are at their job until their “fetters”(1) are removed and they can adjust
to how life should be, so they realize that their job is making them unhappy. This said person will come back and tell the other employees about how poorly they are being treated and they will respond with hate and not give the desired income.

How this piece might be useful