The allegory of the cave describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them by puppeteers, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows that he has seen all his life on the wall are not reality at all.
The escaped prisoner would then return to the cave and tell the other prisoners about what he has seen outside the cave and how the things they believe to be reality are wrong. Most of the prisoners ignore the escapee and go back to watching the shadows casted on the wall as they believe that this is the only reality. The allegory of the cave applies to the way we live today as we are like the prisoners in the way that we pay attention to what we are being told in the news and on the T.V and we believe that the things we see are what life is like despite the fact that we are only being shown the things that the people in the media want us to see.
Most people accept what they are being shown and believe that it is reality and accept it as the reality as that is the way they have lived for ages, like the prisoners in the cave who chose to ignore the escaped prisoner when he told them about the actual reality. The film “The Matrix” is a good example of Plato’s Cave in the way the Neo is the prisoner that is living in the world of shadows until Morpheus (the philosopher who previously escaped the cave) shows him the way out.
The Essay on Truman Show and Allegory of the Cave Reality
... exemplified in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave.’ In the allegory, prisoners perceive shadows on the wall of the cave, as they have done consequently for ... we are presented,” in which Truman and the prisoner both accept the reality of the world with which they are offered, however, ... around him or the people inside it, he doubts whether they are honest. The doubting of the reality of the world around ...
Cypher represents the prisoners who prefer the fake reality that they used to believe and that is why he tries to go back. The Agents are the puppeteers who cast the shadows onto the wall. To conclude, Plato’s Cave explains the way society is and how people can either choose to sit back and accept what they are shown or they can find a way to discover what the real reality is and the people who do so are philosophers.
