Comparing Fahrenheit 451 And Allegory Of The Cave

Burned books and blinding eyes are only some of the consequences in Fahrenheit 451 and Allegory of the Cave. When Montag meets his neighbor, Clarisse, he starts to question his life and he eventually breaks the law, stealing books to try to understand why society is restricted from obtaining more knowledge only to be chased by the Hound. Like Montag, Socrates becomes curious about the world and he eventually escapes the cave only to be blinded by the light. He tries to help the others in the cave see the world outside of the cave, but ends up getting killed. Bradbury and Plato use rhetorical devices in their text to help present the idea that the protagonists undergo a transformation that exposes them to another reality, leading them to severe

As Socrates becomes curious about the world above the cave, he asks Glaucon a series of questions of what the prisoners see, hear, and experience because they are only able to see the shadows casted on the wall by the glowing fire. Every time Glaucon responds to Socrates, Socrates’s urge to free himself from the cave becomes larger. Socrates questions, “And if someone even forced him to look into the glare of the fire, would his eyes not hurt him, and would he not turn away and flee [back] to that which he is capable of looking at? And would he not decide that [what he could see before without any help] was in fact clearer than what was now being shown to him?”(Plato). Glaucon then responds “Precisely.” to Socrates. Socrates learns the risk of escaping the cave and chooses to endure the blinding light that will harm his eyes in order to experience the new reality. Even though the sunlight blinds his eyes, Socrates eventually becomes accustomed to his new setting and realizes how the prisoners inside the cave are entranced by the shadows of the cave and do not want to leave because they are accustomed to the cave. In Fahrenheit 451, when Mildred and Montag

After Socrates experienced a new reality and nature, he planned on going back to the cave to persuade the prisoners to join him. He asks Glaucon if his eyes will have to readjust to the darkness of the cave after being in the sunlight. Because the prisoners were used to seeing the illusions of shadows inside of the cave, they did not want to change their perception of the world and leave their home. Socrates asks, “And if they can get hold of this person who takes it in hand to free them from their chains to lead them up, and if they could kill them, will they not actually kill him?”(Plato). Socrates is planning on freeing the prisoners from their chains and taking them out of the cave, but he questions Glaucon if the prisoners would kill him if they got the chance. Glaucon responds,“They certainly will.” At the end of Socrates' journey to free the prisoners, he ended up getting killed by the prisoners because they saw him as a threat for trying to take them to a new environment. In Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Montag rebels from the government’s law of reading books, risking his life. When Mildred, his wife, found out that he was stealing books and reading them, he slipped out a few lines of poetry to her friends and confessed to Beatty, his boss, that he took a book and read it. Beatty tells him that he