Allegory Of The Cave Writing Assignment Paper (Essay Sample)

Chao Chen
Dr. Ramona Silver
Critical Thinking
11/12/2017
Allegory of the Cave
The allegory of the cave as presented by Plato represents both an outer meaning as well as a symbolic one. According to Plato, the allegory is a conversation between his mentor, Socrates and one of his students. There are various things represented in the allegory which uses to explain some realities in life. First and foremost, Plato uses the allegory to distinguish people who mistake sensory knowledge with the truth. According to Plato, knowledge acquired through senses is more like an opinion which cannot be relied upon. According to him, the best way to gain knowledge is through philosophical thinking.
In the allegory of the cave, there are different representations or symbolism. The cave for instance represents prisoners who are locked up and both their hands and legs tied up to an extent than they cannot function properly. They are forced to face in one direction such that the only thing they can have a look is the stone wall in front of them. The prisoners have been in the cave since they were born and they have never seen the outside world. There is a huge fire behind the prisoners and a raised walkway in between them. In addition, people outside the cave walk along the walkway carrying different things on their heads. According to Plato’s theory, the cave and people in it represent people who believe that knowledge emanates from what they hear and see from the outside world. The cave implies that those who believe in empirical evidence are caught up in a “cave” of misunderstanding.
The allegory also has a representation of the shadows. From the shadows, people are given to imagine themselves as prisoners who cannot look at anything behind or besides them. They must look at only what is in front of them. And when people walk along the walkway they can only observe the shadows of things being carried by people coming and going. These shadows according to Plato symbolize the perceptions of people who believe that empirical evidence is the source of knowledge. That if a person believes that what they see equals the truth, then they are merely seeing shadows of truth rather than truth itself.
Thirdly, there is a symbolic meaning of the game in the allegory of the cave. Plato implies that prisoners in the cave would start guessing which shadow would come first and if one of the prisoners would make a correct guess then the other prisoners would applaud and consider him as the cleverest. The game according to Plato shows how people consider others as masters if they possess empirical knowledge about the world. According to Plato, the master does not deserve any praise since he or she does not have the knowledge he or she is being praised for.
In the allegory of the cave as well, there is an escape scenario. According to the allegory, one of the prisoners gets a chance to escape from the cave. On reaching the outside world, he is shocked and finds it hard to believe if it can actually be real. Nonetheless, as he gets used to the outside world, he becomes to appreciate its reality and realizes that everything in the cave was wrong. He begins to understand that living in the cave was useless and it kept them out of touch with the outside re...