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Diagnostic Essay
Luke Koury
Mr. Kinkaid
Period 4
23 September 2014
Knowledge is Pain and Ignorance is Bliss Themes are an important part in literature and other forms of media. Without them, media would be very straightforward, bland and literal. Themes also connect ideas between different media sources. The Allegory of the Cave has many underlying themes. One very important theme that can be seen throughout media today is knowledge is pain and ignorance is bliss. In the allegory of the cave, knowledge is pain and ignorance is bliss is one of the major themes. It can be seen when Plato writes about the prisoner being forced to look at the fire, or the sun and having his eyes hurt from the intense light. The fire inside the cave represents truth as well as knowledge. The prisoner believed that the shadows were truth and when the stranger told him to look into the fire he realized what he thought to be true was fake. Also, when the prisoner was forced to look into the sunlight, at first it was too much to take in. It hurt his eyes, and I am sure he wished he hadn’t left the security of the cave. The theme knowledge is pain and ignorance is bliss is evident in the movie the Matrix. The Matrix is a movie about how robots have taken over the world, and now humans are grown. Every human within the robots grasp is plugged into the Matrix; a false reality written by the robots in which the humans think it’s the normal world. The world outside the Matrix is harsh and inhospitable. When Neo is pulled out of the Matrix he doesn’t believe what is going on and wishes he had chosen to stay in the Matrix. Later in the movie, one of the people on board his ship betrays the team for a reinsertion into the Matrix with a memory wipe so he forgets everything about the real world. In the movie, he actually says “Ignorance is bliss” Naughty Boy does a great job of portraying the theme knowledge is pain and ignorance is bliss in his song “La La La”. The song is about a person who goes la la

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