In the story, “The Allegory of the Cave”, author Plato uses multiple poetic, literary, and rhetorical devices to convey the themes and meanings of the text. First, the theme of The Allegory of the Cave is, “not everything is as it appears to be”. This means not all beliefs are the truth. The meaning of allegory is, “a story with a hidden and symbolic meaning”. A symbol in the story is the shadows shown to prisoners locked in a cave. On line 20 it says,”...and they see only their own shadows that , or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave”. The shadows symbolize beliefs. The prisoners can’t move their heads, so they only see shadows in front of them. Shadows can relate to society's beliefs. Later,