Plato

Explaining his ideas as a philosopher "king", Plato demonstrates the effect of education of thoughts and emotions in his Allegory of the cave. Plato, as being the speaker of the allegory, addresses all the scenarios of the allegory. The central theme of the allegory demonstrates the effect of education on a human being and how they move from one level of thoughts to another level. Symbolism is all over Plato's allegory, from the cave to the prisoners. Plato's purpose is to show how human beings can react and change because of their physical setting. An allegory is a story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning. Through out Plato's allegory he excludes from being brief and defines everything with a different meaning.

In the allegory of the cave, Plato asks us to imagine the following scenario: A group of people that have lived in a deep cave since birth, never have they seen daylight. The prisoners are trapped in a way in which they cannot move or turn their heads because they chained from their necks to legs. They can only look straight into the darkness of the cave; behind them there is a "blazing fire" and a raise way wall. On the top of the wall there are several statues which can be pictured by the slaves by the shadows. The prisoners watch the

Lewis 2

movement of the statues(puppets) some that talk, others that stood silent. Plato asks us to imagine that one of the prisoners is magically freed and is able to look at the fire and the statues themselves.

After extreme pain and wonder, he eventually realizes that all those things he watched are more real than the shadows he has always believed to be most real things. He notices how the fire and the statues together produce the shadows; which he thought were copies of the real things. This person now believes that the statue and the fire are the most real things in the world. Next, the prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the world above. At first, he was dazzled by the light that he was unable to look at them. Then finally he was able to look at the real world: trees, houses, flowers, and etc. The protagonist also notices that these items are even more real than that statues were. When the prisoner's eye have fully open and he can see the brightness, he lifts his eyes toward the heavens and looks at the sun. He then believes that the sun is the cause of everything that is around him.

The central theme of this allegory of the cave is to demonstrate the effects on human beings as they gradually move from level of thought and experience to other levels. Plato uses this