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Essay on The Allegory of the Cave
Plato was a student of Socrates. He wrote a difficult but brilliant book name “The Republic.” This book is a collection of many dialogues which is mainly the teaching of Socrates. Among them is the story concerning Plato’s elucidation of the growth of the soul toward illumination “The Allegory of the Cave.” He uses a metaphor of hidden details to let the reader picture a cave and also imagine individual who has never seen anything except for the wall of cave. Plato commences his story by relating a dark cave. .
“Behold! Human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads” (Plato, Lee & Lee: 255). The prisoners never saw anything else except for the walls of the cave with the shadows of people, who passed by the walkway behind the prisoners.
Ultimately one of them was freed so as to bring him out of the cave. “And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he's forced into the presence of the sun himself, his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities” (Plato, Lee & Lee: 256). But in the mean time, he becomes familiar to the light plus he begins to see incredible things. He at last realizes that his whole life and his experiences were based upon shadows, which were merely an illusion. Soon he is pushed back into the cave, although he does not want to return......................
