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Analyzing Plato's 'The Allegory Of The Cave'

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Ap Language Summative Assesment Unit 1 Lamin Williams 9-12-16 4A Mrs. Archer In “ The Allegory of the Cave” 360 BCE, Plato emphasises that the cave explains human existence and envisions the world as a dark cave, and humans trapped as prisoners in that cave. Using symbolism he supports this statement by demonstrating to his students that our minds conceive the sources of shadows and the material world we live in as false truths. His purpose is directed towards his students, to help others out of the cave, to reveal the burden of false truths also know as the shadows. Plato uses a didactic tone to help his students understand and encourage them not to stay in the cave, but to free themselves and help others become free of the shadows the …show more content…

The person who releases the prisoners has been enlightened from the bonds of a false reality. The prisoners become completely free when they are realesed from their chains, and accept what things truly are, rather than what they had perceived them to be. The journey out of the cave represents a prisoners’ unwilllingness to change and a resistance to accept new truths. The prisoners have to force themselves out of the cave into this reality. 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. The material world is the one we can see, touch, hear and smell, are just false truths of the reality. By relying just on your senses is making yourself blind from the real world. The world we see is a reflection of the forms the real world represents. By understanding these forms can lead to true

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