Often times, it is assumed that learning does not have negative consequences and leads to one’s enlightenment What people don’t realize is that being thrown into the light can burn. Associating learning with pain is clearly illustrated in both Plato’s Republic and Frederick Douglass’ The Education of Frederick Douglass. Both works represent people who move past their ignorance through the acquisition of knowledge and step into the light, both literally and metaphorically; they become aware of their own situations and with that comes pain. Book seven of Plato’s Republic (trans. 1968) presents the allegory of the cave and the idea that learning isn’t always pleasant.
Equality’s tunnel resembles Plato’s cave, and the Scholars represent those still not in reality. In fact, “The Council of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and therefore the things which are not known by all do not exist,” a mindset parallel to those unaware of reality (52). Equality travels to the Home of Scholars, attempting to bring them into the light, yet just as those in the Plato’s Allegory, the Scholars do not believe him. It is not until after Equality escapes into the forest, however, that he leaves the cave of morality: “We remembered we are the Damned. We remembered it and laughed” he jested (80).
However, as the story progresses, Montag begins to question the validity of these norms and embarks on a journey of enlightenment, defying his society's expectations. Similarly, in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners are trapped in a state of ignorance, knowing only the shadows cast on the cave walls. For another example, “He will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive someone saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion” (Plato 1). It is only when one prisoner breaks free and ventures outside the cave that he discovers the true nature of reality, symbolizing the pursuit of knowledge and
Plato tells us that the prisoners are confused on their emergence from the cave and that the prisoners’ will be blinded once they had been freed from the cave. After a period of time they will adjust their eyesight and begin to understand the true reality that the world poses. The stubbornness to develop a different perspective is seen in much of today’s society. The allegory of the cave is an understanding of what the true world is and how many people never see it because of their views of the society they are raised in.
When someone grows enlightened, they utilize their newfound comprehension and knowledge to unshackle themselves from their lifelong ignorance to pursue a superior understanding of the world around them. This lengthy process often times entails detrimental consequences. It can be a traumatizing experience to disband yourself from a way of thinking that has been deeply ingrained into your psyche. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave showcases how enlightenment and education go hand in hand. His analogy connects directly to the struggles detailed in Frederick Douglass’s essay, Learning to Read and Gwendolyn Brooks poem,
In the allegory, the prisoners who are bonded in the cave, once given freedom, are too blinded by the light to embrace it. He argues to the audience that the “lord” is this bright “visible light” that is “the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual” (Aristotle 35). The light that society pushes many away from fully gasping in the idea of enlightenment. The prisoners in the cave are a metaphor for the vast extent of society that turns away from a greater truth of love, acceptance, caring, and
In “The Allegory of the Cave”, Plato’s idea of the human who escaped the cave, but came back to tell about his learnings but the other people in the cave did not want to listen to him since they believed that the cave was the real truth and did not want to be educated about the outside
His student Plato’s story, “The Cave,” emphasizes that humans may independently take the intellectual journey to enlightenment, reach the Realm of Perfect Forms, and discover truth for themselves. Both teacher and student insisted that Man himself had to reach truth, as it is not received from a higher
In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” written in 1983, the author points out that empathy and perspective are the only way to truly experience profound emotion. The narrator is struggling is sucked into his own comfort zone, he drowns his dissatisfaction on life, marriage, and job in alcohol. A man of limited awareness breaks through his limitations by socializing with a blind man. Despite Roberts physical limitations, he is the one who saved narrator from himself and helped him to find the ones vies of the world.
1) In the allegory of the cave, Plato’s main goal is to illustrate his view of knowledge. A group of prisoners have been chained in a cave their whole lives and all they have ever been exposed to were shadows on the wall and voices of people walking by. The prisoners in the cave represent humans who only pay attention to the physical aspects of the world (sight and sound). Once one of them escapes and sees the blinding light, all he wants is to retreat back to the cave and return to his prior way of living. This shows that Plato believes enlightenment and education are painful, but the pain is necessary for enlightenment and it is worth it.
In other words they only know about that false reality that they are living in and to them there is nothing else. Plato then goes on to describe of how those people are enlightened when one is taken out of the cave and brought into the outside world they are shown the real reality and “enlightened”. If one of the people is enlightened he or she will be motivated to help those in the cave
Plato, or Socrates used very unique metaphors to explain how humans are sort of trapped within their own ignorance, and the only way to get out is to acquire knowledge and wisdom. He says things such as “human beings living in an underground cave”, to compare our lack of knowledge to trapped in a cave. In then goes to say that we’ve spend all of our lives stuck in this cave, chained down with the only way to escape is to get to the other end of the cave closer to the sun or the light. The sun or the light represent the truth and the knowledge we wish to obtain, because light makes things visible for the eyes to see.
When the enlightened prisoner returns to the cave “they all laugh at him and say he had spoiled his eyesight by going up there”(Plato __). Plato infers that society will purposely be blind to conform to society’s norms. When the escaped prisoner returns to the cave he “gets his eyes full of darkness” (Plato ___). The freed prisoner explains what the actual objects were that they were seeing were. Plato demonstrates that the ignorance and blindness to the truth is by choice.
Searching for the truth is very challenging, as the world today entrenched in lies. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” briefly tells a story about cavemen being chained on most parts of their body, restring all movement including their head, since childhood. Then, he discussed the consequences inflicted onto the cavemen, specifically their perspective towards the truth after being chained for a long period of time in the dark cave, which resembles many events occurring in a person’s daily life. Based on the discussed effects, the author argues that human beings should always seek the real meaning of truth.
The freed prisoner would finally uncover he was living a life of deception as he only lived to see shadows of mere images of real things until now. The process of coming to know reality would be a ‘difficult’ and ‘painful’ transition as his first instinct would be to cling on to what his familiar with, and withdraw back into the cave. Therefore the prisoner would need to be dragged out of living in the darkness in order to see the light of day. The prisoner would inevitably be overwhelmed by the brightness however he will need to grow accustomed to the light before he could see things outside the cave and will then have more knowledge of what is real such as imperfections of human life to the forms of goodness. After discovering reality with his new found wisdom he would eventually think back to life trapped in the cave and therefore would ultimately congratulate himself on his good fortune and would feel sorry for the prisoners still chained down in the darkness.
