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Comparing Allegory Of The Cave 'And The Truman Show'

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Abigail Jones Mr. G. Allain ENG4U4-B July 8, 2024 Comparison Essay between “Allegory of the Cave” and The Truman Show Truth is the work behind reality, backed with facts and knowledge rather than the imagined. The discovery of truth is a theme highly explored in both the narrative of “Allegory of the Cave” and The Truman Show. The “Allegory of the Cave,” written by Plato, is about a prisoner trapped in a cave his whole life, only ever perceiving a portion of the world. He is finally freed and comes to experience the truth behind all he has ever shown. The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, is about a man named Truman who lives in a controlled reality and environment, similar to the allegory and the cave. Truman slowly realizes the subtle, bizarre reiterations of his daily life and breaks free from them, revealing his world to be …show more content…

To begin, in both “Allegory in the Cave” and The Truman Show, protagonists and surrounding characters resist comprehending and acknowledging the truth. When the freed prisoner came back to tell the others about what he had seen and the truth, they did not believe him. “Wouldn’t he appear ridiculous? Men would say of him that he had gone up and had come back down with his eyesight ruined and that it was better not even to think of ascending.” (Plato, 2). The prisoners resist accepting what the protagonist sees as the truth due to their lack of knowledge and ignorance. Their world is entirely the projection and manipulation of the shadows. Their confinement and familiarity with the cave make it hard for them to comprehend and accept another reality. When Truman first saw the bizarre patterns in his world, he did not want to believe or accept

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In both of the cases, the author and the director used to method of symbolism to help them get their purpose across to the readers. Many objects in both of the stories were given a meaning and an assumed understanding of what it is symbolising. Shadows is something that is presented in both of the cases, in The Allegory of the Cave there were objects that walked past the fire behind the prisoners, which gave out shadows to the prisoners to see. The shadows represented the truth that was not allowed to be seen by the prisoners but was able to get a small sense of what it is. In The Truman Show, there was a character who played the role of the shadow for Truman.

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What you see can be altered by what you know. Authors fabricate and establish selective truths in their pieces,such as novels, films and poems this is shown by the director, Peter Weir,with The Truman Show, Author Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. They conveyed this through the use of figurative language such as irony, symbolism and metaphors. Together they bring the larger idea that oppression creates a new truth, which means there isn’t one truth but multiple, therefore the truth does not exist. To begin, oppression creates truth.

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Allegory of the Cave, a short story by renowned philosopher Plato, describes the life of prisoners chained inside of a cave where all the knowledge they receive is given by unknown strangers behind them. It continues to elaborate on their transition from a lackluster world where they were truly in the dark to one that completely surpasses all expectations. Likewise, Stranger Than Fiction, a movie written by Zach Helm, illustrates an IRS auditor, Harold Crick, that is shackled by his mundane lifestyle and also has an embodied voice that seems to be controlling his life. The movie goes on to describe his arduous journey toward finding the woman behind the voice, which ultimately gives him a new perspective on life. Zach Helm’s screenplay Stranger Than Fiction and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both describe the experience of a person escaping limited perspective darkness and discovering a more complex world than they had previously thought existed.

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The person who releases the prisoners has been enlightened from the bonds of a false reality. The prisoners become completely free when they are realesed from their chains, and accept what things truly are, rather than what they had perceived them to be. The journey out of the cave represents a prisoners’ unwilllingness to change and a resistance to accept new truths. The prisoners have to force themselves out of the cave into this reality.

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But, when adjusted to the sun, the prisoner can see the world as it truly is, not just as the shadows in the cave. Plato begins to explain that if the prisoner returned to the cave to explain what he saw to the other prisoners, they would simply not believe him. Truman, lives in

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In both stories, there are more than one realities, there can even be infinite realities. Both relate to the divided line theory and the theory of forms. The Truman Show and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both raise many questions relating to the basis of human existence. Reality is much more than just the visible world in both stories. They are both symbols for contrasts between ideas and what humans see as

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Some of them eventually conclude that it is inhumane and will attempt to inform him and send him messages. These people are acting similarly to the liberated prisoner returning for the others and trying to inform them of their misconceptions. Truman has been receiving small, easily overlooked signs for his entire life that he has not been able to make sense of. It could be argued that Truman was just unconsciously not allowing himself to make

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However, one prisoner is released and forced out into the reality, allowing the reader to understand that the world one sees and experiences is not the reality, but rather an illusion. Similarly, in The Truman Show by Andrew Niccol, Truman Bank has been growing up in Seahaven Island, a place created just for him to live in for a television show that is all about him. Throughout the film, Truman realizes that Seahaven is not the real world, and viewers see his journey to get out of this illusion, and into reality outside the false world. Both The Allegory of the Cave and The Truman Show prove that the physical world is an illusion that prevents one from discovering reality. The concept of illusion versus reality is evident in both works through similarities in plot, similarities in symbolism, and differences in character.

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Throughout the movie, Truman begins to realize that the whole world revolves around him and how the producers of the show have created his reality, thus developing his sociological imagination. To start,

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So I thought, why would we still want Freedom anymore. That was when I realized, the best way to live life, is to live in detainment. The world that Truman lives in a is a very simple world, because it was a world with very limited freedom. Truman was always being

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Plato’s short story the Allegory of the Cave, Plato portrays a scene in a cave to the reader that analyzes human actions. The story is about a group of men that are chained for their entire life. The only thing they are exposed to are shadows on the wall of a fire burning by people behind them. The people exposing these men are hiding the truth of the outside world. Plato reveals that humans are easily fooled into believing what they see.

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