Plato's Allegory Of The Cave Modern Day Analysis

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#2 Plato’s Allegory In Modern Day
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is about the human perspective and enlightenment. In todays society Plato’s allegory is still relevant and is deeply rooted in education. College students are a perfect analogy for the “Allegory of the Cave”.
We are told from the very beginning that we need to have an education to be successful in life. College is the only path we can take to get an higher education. Taking a class in college is similar to what the four prisoners go through in the cave: In both the cave and classroom scenario, teachers are like the “puppeteers” and they are in control of the information we receive. Lastly, when one ventures to answer a question first they are looked at differently because it …show more content…

We, the students are the “chained prisoners”. We are only allowed to know what the “puppeteers” allow us to know. The “puppeteers” can be seen as the teachers. Now we have to ask ourselves, what are the “shadows on the wall” that we see everyday. I believe that the “shadows” represent all of the illusions that we live by as our reality. College students, myself included, tend to have a like minded way of thinking, similar to the men in the cave. We tend to think that we know everything that there is in the world, when in fact we don’t. We seemingly have a complete grasp of what our future will be, when really our future is bound to adapt based on changes in our life. The prisoner also believes he knew what was his future based on where he was at the time, until he ventured out and discovered things weren’t as easy as they seem. Upon his realization, that things were not as he perceived them, he had to adapt to the new way of thinking. Adaption is often scary, and many people will tend to avoid it at all costs. Some people deny the need to adapt, even though it is apparent that adaption is eminent, because of fear of the unknown. The chained prisoners are indeed in denial and not willing to believe their fellow prisoners new found thought because, it goes against their already perceived