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Allegory Of The Cave And The Achievement Of Desire, By Richard Rodriguez

853 Words4 Pages

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” symbolized the cave in which the prisoners are held captive as a symbol of enlightenment and coming to know the reality. The allegory symbolized the cave as human’s narrow-mindedness as well as the concept of dogmatic finality, assumption of knowing everything when there is always more to learn and access. The “Allegory of the Cave” and “The Achievement of Desire” by Rodriguez share similar ideas in the sense that Rodriguez as a student came to an ultimate realization (at a specific point in time) of the effect his isolation had on his relationship with his family. According to Socrates and Plato, knowledge is gained from separating oneself from one’s current state to ascending to reach something that is higher, …show more content…

“Months later, two weeks of Christmas vacation: the first hours home were the hardest. I mentioned only small obvious things… We tried to make our conversation seem more than like an interview.” (Rodriguez 571) Rodriguez feels disconnected with his family because he never spent time with them. Instead, he would prefer being alone reading books, essentially training himself to be a scholarship boy, which he later describes as one who memorizes, lacking the experience and passion for studying. His realization was during college when he cane to understand how uncomfortable if is to talk to them. He came to the realization at this time, because he has been absent for a long time, do when placed back in the situation, he had difficulty adjusting. This is similar to the prisoner in Plato’s allegory because once the prisoner adjusted with a new environment (outside of the cave), he found it straining to go back into the cave. Similarly, once one is adjusted to a situation, they will experience some discomfort when forced to escape the situation. However, the discomfort is necessary because it allows for growth and realization of one’s mistakes. “… the journey upwards [is the] ascent of the soul into the intellectual world… whether true

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Also, outside the cave realm, people were engaged in their daily work; however, a wall had been built between these two worlds and restricted the cavemen from seeing the world. They could only see the shadows of people along the wall and accepted those shadows as the reality (Plato, trans. 1997, p. 514b-515b). This masterpiece of Plato is one of the most famous and perceptive assay to illustrate the nature of reality. The cave stands for the state of most human beings, and the tale of escape from the cave is the origin of the true understanding. In this composition, Plato believes that the world is made up of two parts; the forms, and the reality.

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