What Casts The Shadows In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

What Casts the Shadows

As a child, we often do not think of death as something that will impact our day to day lives. Sure, we are informed of the concept of death and we are aware that it is present, but frankly, our understanding of death is not completely developed until it actually happens to directly affect us. Similar to the cave presented in Plato’s, Allegory of the Cave, we are enclosed in our own happy, childish world where nothing matters except for who is going to be the it during a game of tag in the yard.

In Plato’s, Allegory of the Cave, Socrates presents the idea of prisoners who have spent their entire lives chained up deep inside a cave. They cannot move and the only thing that they can see is the cave wall directly in front

Heaven is filled with good people and beautiful scenery. During the sermons I listened but I did not really understand what it all meant. I guess I missed the parts where we were told that the dead did not come back. Maybe that was why I asked when Charlie would be coming back when my mother solemnly told me he had died that afternoon.

I went to see Charlie lying on his bed. He had passed during his sleep. At the time I hoped he was only sleeping. I hoped he wake up and it was all a big mistake. We buried him under his favorite japanese maple tree as it shed its bright red leaves that grey fall evening. I cried for days since not only did I lose a dog, I lost a friend. My innocent perception of death gone.

The prisoners in Plato’s, Allegory of the cave, had always believed the shadows in front of them to be true. Similarly, I believed what was right in front of me. The shadow for the prisoners were literally shadows, my shadow was the belief that Charlie would always be there because he was always there. Day in and day out. One day to another it all changed, both for me and the prisoner. Both of our worlds were changed in a just a

The manifest content of the first half of this quote is exactly what it sounds like. The prisoner’s eye are hurt due to the impact of the bright light hitting his eyes upon surfacing from the dark cave for the first time. I also experienced such a sharp literal pain but my pain was not in the eyes but in the heart. However, the latent content of the quote as a whole suggests that his pain is also coming from experiencing his perceptional change. The cave shadows were not “reality” they were nothing but mere illusions of “reality.” My childish world was dramatically changed as I came to terms with what had happened to my best