They see different surroundings and actual objects, not just shadows and of course they are stunned. All that they believed to be real and true was a lie and they have now seen reality. The prisoner then returns to the cave to tell the others of his findings but upon returning he is put down by the others and they dislike what he is telling him. Plato then says that upon his return the prisoner could supposedly be killed. 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.
He leads them from the cave and shows them reality, challenging all they have ever known. Returning to the cave the prisoners reject what he has shown them, although the saviour realises he cannot go back to his former vision. He becomes an outcast with knowledge without friends. The difference between the fire and the sun is key to understanding the analogy. The light of the fire gave the prisoners their limited vision, showing only shadows, whereas the brightness of the sun allowed and expansive view of reality.
The prisoner reached the real world outside of the cave and, blinded by the sun, saw the real world in its glory and realised the illusion of the shadows. The prisoner returned to the cave with his enlightenment and tried to explain to the others of the reality. The other prisoners did not believe him, he was over-excited, blinded, confused and clumsy. The prisoners became frustrated with the man and wanted rid of the man disturbing their reality. In some versions of the story the released prisoner is even killed by the others.
Explain the Allegory of the Cave The allegory of the Cave was made by Plato when he tried to explain human ignorance and how almost all humans don’t see our true reality. It refers to the Cave as what we perceive reality to be and how we are chained to a wall to only see this perceived reality. Plato tries to make us a see a world in which the prison was to be released from his chains. Where he would feel intense pain by the light outside and dazed but the new world he begins to see, where he would also struggle to adjust at all to truth of reality and his new surroundings. After he realises that what he previously thought to be reality was in fact a lie, he tries to forget about his past life.
As this free man sees the light, an “eye ache” is inevitable because he’s been in the dark for too long. He will either escape to the cave, choosing to believe that the shadows were clearer than these other objects now being shown to him, or, endure the radiance to be able to look at the Sun—democracy, and contemplate its nature—freedom, without any alien medium—the government. A hero would endure the light and possess the knowledge of the true meaning of freedom—following his own conscience. However, understanding the truth by oneself doesn’t make a change at all. To inform others and infect others to join him is the real change.
The cave symbolises the World of Sense, a figure of captives are tired by their ankles and necks so that they are unable to change direction. They have been brought up like this since birth this is why they don’t know anything else but this. The prisoners are individuals who act like marionettes before the fire which burns so that they would be able to see shadows which flicker on the wall before them. The captives observe this flickering shadow which appears on the wall before them, eventually they developed a pattern over-time. They try to prognosticate movements of the shadows; the sounds are made by individuals with the shadows, this is what they think as true reality.
Dooming Myths and Secret Allegories Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Camus’ “Myth of the Sisyphus” both attempt to explain the way people think or why they act as they do. The stories demonstrate the same idea, “without exposure to change, thinking is limited and unawareness is the result.” Both stories illustrate moral and religious attitudes. The “Allegory of the Cave” demonstrates how humans are afraid of change and what they do not know. Plato represents man’s condition as being “chained in a cave” since childhood with their arms and legs immobilized as well as their heads. They are unable to turn around and witness the fire burning behind them.
He makes it near impossible for those people to see the truth spoken by the Bible. All they know is what he wants them to know, which are the shadows the prisoners see cast on the wall. The “prisoners” do not even know that there is a better world outside for them. They either believe that their “cave” is the best place to live, or the only place to live. These prisoners can break free though, by seeing the light, or God.
“Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall- resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon” (Poe, Pit 3). The narrator is frightened of what might happen to him while in the dungeon. He is in fact so frightened that in his imagination there have already been thoughts about what might happen to him if he is held captive any longer. “The disease sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them” (Poe, Heart 657). The eye symbolizes having an eye for the ultimate truth; with the ultimate truth the narrator can calmly tell the readers the whole story (Ki, 2).
Then he realized that the sun is an important factor which is responsible for the seasons and the year so had gotten the conclusion that the sun was the form of the good. But when he comes back to the cave, he tries to tell the other ones about the reality, but they reject everything that he said and condemned him because he has seen goodness and acted rightly. However, knowledge could only be derived from the timeless and perfect world of the forms. Anything derived from the movement and uncertain world of sensation would be mere opinion as demonstrated by the prisoners in the allegory of the cave. So, when the prisoner