The prisoners represent the citizens of the world within the analogy of the cave and the people who carry the objects are the politicians of the world. Plato had a strong dislike for politicians as he believed they told people only what they wanted to hear, which is represented through them creating shadows of real objects (false hope) to the prisoners. The
Because of the fire, the statues cast shadows across the wall that the prisoners are facing. The prisoners watch the stories that these shadows play out, and because these shadows are all they ever get to see, they believe them to be the most real things in the world. When they talk to one another about “men,” “women,” “trees,” or “horses,” they are referring to these shadows. These prisoners represent the lowest stage on the line—imagination. A prisoner is freed from his bonds, and is forced to look at the fire and at the statues themselves.
Explain Plato’s Parable of the Cave Plato’s parable of the cave is an analogy of what Plato thought reality was. It tells us a story of a group of prisoners found deep within a cave. The prisoners were chained together and forced to watch a large wall in front of them. This was their life since childhood, watching this wall. Behind the prisoners was a large fire and between the fire and prisoners was a walkway.
“The Caves in Our World” In the story, “The Allegory of the Cave,” there are prisoners chained in a cave who have never seen the outside world, but only distorted views of people and the objects they carry along the wall behind the prisoners. In one sense, the cave could be seen as the darkness that people live in when they do not know Jesus. They live in a dark world, where the fire is Satan, who lies and distorts peoples’ views of things by casting the shadows on the wall. People who do not know Jesus are tempted and lied to by Satan. He makes it near impossible for those people to see the truth spoken by the Bible.
Explain Plato’s analogy of the cave [25] Plato’s analogy of the cave describes some people who are prisoners and they are only able to see one wall of the cave. Behind them was a lit fire which gave light to be able to cast shadows onto the wall that the prisoners were facing. These shadows were cast by puppeteers who were behind a wall and held things up to tell stories to the prisoners via the wall. One prisoner is forced out of the cave, where he has been his whole life, to see the ‘real’ world. He finds out, after adjusting to the new sunlight, that the shadows were just representations of real objects and that the shadows he had believed to be real objects were in fact not.
To inform others and infect others to join him is the real change. Unfortunately, rarely has the history seen somebody debunking the cruel truth to the public and not being retaliated. By trying to free those “prisoners in the cave”, a man is really risking being conflicted, putting in jail or even being sentenced to death like Copernicus’s destination of advocating his heliocentric
Plato describes the cave as having prisoners chained up facing the cave wall. These prisoners are in an illusory world (our world- the world of appearance). These prisoners are chained to the floor, these chains could symbolize our senses, saying our senses (the chains) cause us to accept everything that we see and hear around us. There is a fire burning behind them, of which they can see the shadows of on the wall in front of them, they believe the shadow is real and is the reality of the fire. As well as the shadow of the fire, the prisoners can also see shadows of people crossing the footbridge behind them, carrying stone animal statues; again they believe these shadows to be real.
In his description of the parable of the cave, he describes prisoners in a cave ‘with a long entrance open to daylight as wide as the cave,’ the prisoners legs and heads are restricted of movement so they can only look straight ahead of them. ‘Behind them and higher up’, is a fire and between the prisoners and the fire is a road with a curtain ‘like the screen at puppet shows between the operators and the audience, above which they show their puppets’ (Simile of the cave). Men go past this screen, carrying tools and gear behind the curtain and the prisoners believe that the shadows they saw are real and that they were able to speak. The prisoners believe they are real because it is all they have been seeing since they were children. They never question the source of the shadows, they simply accept that they are there.
In this scenario Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave that is occupied by prisoners who have been in the cave since childhood with their legs and necks shackled by chains where there movement is restricted and their visibility is limited to one side of the cave. Behind the prisoners is a gigantic fire and between the fire and the prisoners is a walkway which is used by people who often pass through carrying an array of objects. Unable to turn their heads and only knowing the shadows the prisoners begin to see this as their own reality. Socrates begins to explain to Glaucon, what if one of those chained is released from their cave and walks into the real world where they are mesmerized by the light. Gradually the prisoner begins to feel fortunate and begins to become accustomed to his new world and.
Only true reality can be found in the world of forms, in which everything is unchanging. Plato’s analogy is set in a cave, the cave is meant to represent the physical world, from which people only see what Plato describes to be an illusion. The prisoners within the cave know of nothing but what they have seen for all their lives. Behind the prisoners are a low wall and a walkway, in the walkway a fire burns, every now and then people walk past the fire carrying objects that reflect into the cave as shadows. The prisoners see the shadows and think that what they see is reality, like we think about our world now.