Plato's Message Of The Cave

The Matrix’s message is the same as Plato’s Cave Analogy: belief isn’t knowledge and opinion isn’t a fact. There is more to see than meets the eye.

Plato’s story of the cave is an analogy. He explains reality through a story of several prisoners who have been chained since birth in a dark cave. These prisoners face a blank wall with a fire behind them and a low wall between the fire and the prisoners. They cannot turn their heads or move. All they see is the cave wall in front of them.

On the cave wall, the shapes of things pass before them as shadows. These shadows are cast by people who carry objects as they walk across the low wall between the fire and the back of the prisoners. The prisoners see these shadows and they come up with sounds

However, his eyes adjust to the fire and the shadows become hard to see; shown in the quote, “the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows…” (Plato).

The prisoner’s progress out of the cave is a struggle. Every step challenges his beliefs as said in, “… that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he’s forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated?” (Plato). Upon reaching the mouth of the cave, he steps outside, and he is blinded again by the light of the sun.

Again, he has a hard time seeing. He looks at the shadows and the reflections in the water as his eyes adjust before looking up. He cannot look at the sun directly, but he understands that it is the source of the shadows and the reflections in the water. This awareness makes him grasp how limited his vision was in the cave, and he realizes the truth. However, he feels sympathy for the other prisoners, “Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?”

Unfortunately, the prisoners see him as crazy and they don’t understand him as seen in the quote, “… Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending…” (Plato). They can see the shadows, while he has difficulty seeing them now. They cannot see this world that he claims is outside the cave, but they can see the shadows. To them, the shadows are real because they can see them. They cannot see what is outside the cave. In the cave, life is predictable as seen in the quote, “…they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future…”