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Allegory Of The Cave Symbolism

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Allegory Of The Cave Symbolism
In Plato’s “Allegory of a Cave”, he depicts an area where prisoners live chained in a cave. All they see are shadows casted on the wall and these shadows shape the prisoner’s reality. One of the prisoners then escapes the cave. Initially, he is blinded by the sun and the reality of the new world. He can now see beyond the shadows. Over time, he recognizes that his life has been controlled by others and now knows the truth. Nonetheless, “Allegory of the Cave” can be perceived in several different ways.
“Allegory of the Cave” is a storyline in the form of an allegory. An allegorical writing is a type of writing that has formal and symbolic meanings. In an allegorical storyline setting, characters, and actions can be used as symbols that interpreted a significant meaning. The “Allegory of the Cave” has allegorical meaning because there are multiple symbolic associations. The dark cave can be seen as a prison made by ourselves because of the ignorance behind our minds. Also, Plato states, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images”. Plato is insisting that the shadows symbolically suggest a world full of illusions. Finally, Plato himself writes, “First he will see the shadows best, next the …show more content…
The media has society in its grasp, many people’s ideas are formed by what they see on the media. Regardless, whether they are in fact verifiable or counterfeit. In “Allegory of the Cave”, an individual has a hard time distinguishing between truth and illusion. In modern day, the cave represents the media and the information presented to us is the shadows on the cave wall. We are alike to the prisoner’s in the cave, we receive illusions everyday of our lives. These illusions influence our daily activities. For example, the weather forecast determines what we might wear that day or what one’s daily activities may
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