Plato's Allegory of the Cave Compared to the Human Condition

The Allegory Because of how we live, true reality is not obvious to most of us. However, we mistake what we see and hear for reality and truth. This is the basic premise for Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners sit in a cave, chained down, watching images cast on the wall in front of them. They accept these views as reality and they are unable to grasp their overall situation: the cave and images are a ruse, a mere shadow show orchestrated for them by unseen men. At some point, a prisoner is set free and is forced to see the situation inside the cave. Initially, one does not want to give up the security of his or her familiar reality; the person has to be dragged past the fire and up the entranceway. This is a difficult and painful struggle. When individuals step into the sunshine, their eyes slowly accommodate to the light and their fundamental view of the world, of reality, is transformed. They come to see a deeper, more genuine, authentic reality: a reality marked by reason. The individual then makes the painful readjustment back into the darkness of the cave to free the prisoners. However, because he now seems mad -describing a new strange reality - they reject him to the point of threatening to kill him. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a direct representation of the human condition, the circumstances we as humans presently encounter, circumstances such as conceptual frameworks, or basic beliefs, and our typical behaviors in society. The allegory metaphorically describes our situation as human beings in the world today. In his story, Plato utilizes several key elements to portray his metaphor of the human condition. Plato's image contains pertinent ideas about society that are relevant to my everyday life. Through his reading, I have begun to discover the ideal form, the use of reason over perception to approach, view, and judge all things.
Prisoners, watching life unfold on the cave wall in front of them, accepting what they see