Plato’s Allegory of the Cave Explained

An Athenian philosopher living in ancient Greece, Plato is famous in part for penning the Socratic dialogue The Allegory of the
Cave, one of the most significant pieces of work in literary history.

What Is an Allegory?
The word ‘allegory’ comes from the Latin ‘allegoria,’ meaning speaking to imply something else. An allegory represents a larger
point about society or human nature through a simple story, in which different characters may represent real-life figures.
Sometimes, situations in the story may echo stories from history or modern-day life without ever explicitly stating this connection.
Allegories are similar to metaphors in that both illustrate an idea by making a comparison to something else. However, allegories
are complete stories with characters, while metaphors are brief figures of speech.

What Is The Allegory of the Cave?

The Allegory of the Cave is a Socratic dialogue recorded by Greek philosopher Plato. Plato was a student of Socrates, and one of
the few people to write down some of his many teachings, which were eventually compiled into their own books. The Republic is
one such book, containing The Allegory of the Cave, a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaucon. As presented by
Plato, Socrates’s allegory of the cave imagines a group of people chained together inside an underground cave as prisoners.
Behind the prisoners there is a fire, and between the prisoners and the fire are moving puppets and real objects on a raised
walkway with a low wall. However, the prisoners are unable to see anything behind them, as they have been chained and stuck
looking in one direction—at the cave wall—their whole lives.
As they look at the wall before them, they believe the shadows of objects cast by the moving figures are real things—and the only
things. Their visible world is their whole world. The narrative goes on to ponder about what would happen if one of the prisoners
were forced to leave. What would they see? How would they adjust? Would they believe what they saw outside? What would
happen to them if they returned to the cave? Would they be able to see the same things they saw before? The narrative assumes
the freed prisoner would return and try to liberate their fellow prisoners, now knowing how much more of the world exists outside
the cave. However, in its conclusion, Socrates and Glaucon agree that the other prisoners would likely kill those who try to free
them, as they would not want to leave the safety and comfort of their known world.

What Does The Allegory of the Cave Mean?

Plato uses the cave as a symbolic representation of how human beings live in the world, contrasting reality versus our
interpretation of it. These two ideas reflect the two worlds in the story: the world inside the cave, and the world outside. For the
prisoners in the cave, the shadows on the wall created by firelight are all they know to be real. If one of the prisoners breaks free
and witnesses the outside world, they will come to understand that as the true reality. However, when the freed prisoner returns to
the darkness of the cave, their eyes will have now been blinded by the light of the sun, and their fellow prisoners still inside the
cave will believe that it is the outside world that is harmful; to them, that truth is not worth seeking.
The allegory delves into the philosophical thought of truth, and how those with different experiences or backgrounds may
perceive it. The shadows on the wall of the cave are constantly changing, so there is no stability or consistency offered for those
who bear witness to them—only a false reality. They have no knowledge that the real world exists outside of their dark cave, or
even that there is a real world other than their own. Meanwhile, the person who has left the cave will not be able to exist as they
once did. In fact, they may even come to pity or feel superior to those who remain in the cave. The allegory essentially
demonstrates the conflicts between knowledge and belief and what happens to a person once they’ve been enlightened. It is an
examination on the nature of humanity, and fear of the unknown.

The Influence of The Allegory of the Cave

Plato’s cave allegory has influenced philosophy as well as media and filmmaking, whether directly or indirectly. References to
Plato’s allegory of the cave appear in works such as:

 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953): In this famous dystopian novel, fireman Guy Montague burns books for a
living, until a new acquaintance forces him to reconsider his values. Through literature, Montague discovers the outside
world.
 Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells (1904): In this Plato-esque story, a man with sight stumbles into a land of the blind,
where all the villagers lost their sight due to a disease. However, not only can they not see, but they also don’t believe
anyone else can. The man fails to prove to the villagers that he can see, and in the end, he is unable to save them from an
impending rock slide.
 The Matrix (1999): This popular film follows Neo (Keanu Reeves) as he discovers that the world he has been living in is
actually a simulated reality. Neo decides to leave his comfortable existence and learn the truth.
 The Truman Show (1998): In this movie about a TV show, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) lives a “fake” life that is used
purely for the entertainment of others. Slowly, he begins to chip away at the facade, even though everyone else around
him refuses to admit he’s right.
 Room by Emma Donoghue (2010): Author Emma Donoghue has acknowledged the influence of the Socratic allegory in
her novel, Room, which is told from the perspective of a young boy who has never left the room where he was born.

Shrek is forced to leave the comfort of his swamp - the Cave - for the wider world.
Consider what the Cave of the world you are writing about is. It could be your main character's home or their hometown. If you're writing a

coming-of-age novel, it could be school or college, with your characters reaching maturity when they leave.

The ‘Allegory Of The Cave’ is a theory put forward by Plato, concerning human perception. Plato claimed that knowledge gained
through the senses is no more than opinion and that, in order to have real knowledge, we must gain it through philosophical
reasoning.
‘The Allegory of the Cave’ by Plato
In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who
really do see the truth. It goes like this:

The Cave
 Imagine a cave, in which there are three prisoners. The prisoners are tied to some rocks, their arms and legs are
bound and their head is tied so that they cannot look at anything but the stonewall in front of them.
 These prisoners have been here since birth and have never seen outside of the cave.
 Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between them is a raised walkway.
 People outside the cave walk along this walkway carrying things on their head including; animals, plants, wood
and stone.
The Shadows
 So, imagine that you are one of the prisoners. You cannot look at anything behind or to the side of you – you
must look at the wall in front of you.
 When people walk along the walkway, you can see shadows of the objects they are carrying cast on to the wall.
 If you had never seen the real objects ever before, you would believe that the shadows of objects were ‘real.

The Game
 Plato suggests that the prisoners would begin a ‘game’ of guessing which shadow would appear next.
 If one of the prisoners were to correctly guess, the others would praise him as clever and say that he were a
master of nature.
The Escape
 One of the prisoners then escapes from their bindings and leaves the cave.
 He is shocked at the world he discovers outside the cave and does not believe it can be real.
 As he becomes used to his new surroundings, he realizes that his former view of reality was wrong.
 He begins to understand his new world, and sees that the Sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual
journey where he discovers beauty and meaning
 He see’s that his former life, and the guessing game they played is useless.
The Return
 The prisoner returns to the cave, to inform the other prisoners of his findings.
 They do not believe him and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free.
‘ The Allegory of The Cave’ by Plato – The Meaning
The Allegory of the cave by Plato should not be taken at face value. In essays and exams, whoever is marking it expects you to
have a deeper understanding of the meaning of the theory. You can then use these to think about criticisms and then to form your
own opinion.

The Cave
 In Plato’s theory, the cave represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in
the world – empirical evidence. The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a ‘cave’ of
misunderstanding.
The Shadows
 The Shadows represent the perceptions of those who believe empirical evidence ensures knowledge. If you
believe that what you see should be taken as truth, then you are merely seeing a shadow of the truth. In Plato’s
opinion you are a ‘pleb’ if you believe this (their insult for those who are not Philosophers)!
The Game
 The Game represents how people believe that one person can be a ‘master’ when they have knowledge of the
empirical world. Plato is demonstrating that this master does not actually know any truth, and suggesting that it
is ridiculous to admire someone like this.
The Escape
 The escaped prisoner represents the Philosopher, who seeks knowledge outside of the cave and outside of the
senses.
 The Sun represents philosophical truth and knowledge
 His intellectual journey represents a philosophers journey when finding truth and wisdom
The Return
  The other prisoners reaction to the escapee returning represents that people are scared of knowing philosophical
truths and do not trust philosophers.
It is always recommended that you read the original text by Plato to reach the top grades. If you would like to purchase ‘The
Republic’ by Plato, click here!
You might also like to read about Plato’s Theory of Forms.

Platos Theory of Forms – What does it really mean?

October 8, 2012 by Amy Trumpeter
Following on from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we should discuss Platos Theory of Forms. Plato suggests that the world we live
in is a world of appearances but the real world is a world of ideas that he calls Forms.
The thinking behind Platos Theory of Forms
 Plato believed that what we can see around us is a world of appearances, the material world.
 He asks, what does it mean to be a tree or an animal?
 In the material world, things like trees and plants and animals will all die out.
 The world of Forms, Plato suggests, holds the true Form of everything in our world and these cannot die.
The Forms
 A Form is the idea about what a thing is.
 For example, there are many types of trees but when we think of a tree there are certain characteristics we assign
to it – it has branches and leaves.
 So, there must be an ideal tree in the world of forms. An ideal, which every other tree imitates.
Plato’s Forms
 Plato was not concerned with trees, he was concerned with the ideal Forms of concepts such as Beauty, Truth,
Justice and the Good.
 He observed that the term beauty may be applied to different objects and people.
 However, there are many types of beauty.
 Plato suggests that underlying all of these is the real Form of beauty.
 And some part of the idea of beauty is imitated by all the different beautiful things.
The Form of the Good
 The most important form is the Form of the Good. In the material world we can label things as good, but this
does not tell us what goodness is.
The World of Forms
 Plato says that there must be somewhere where these Forms exist.
 As a form is unchanging as it is not a physical object and it can never die, so it cannot be in the material world.
 Plato suggests that in our world there are only shadows and images of the Forms.
 When we are born, we have some recollection of what the Forms are – he suggests evidence for this is that we
all have a basic understanding of what beauty is without being taught it.
 However, through our lives we lose the idea of the True forms.
 The Philosopher is someone who tries to escape the material world and see the Forms that lie behind it.
 In his book, The Republic, Plato suggests that it is the Philosophers who should rule in society.

 The Allegory of the Cave is a thought experiment in philosophy written by Plato to examine the nature of knowledge and
its sources. The allegory explores how education, or the lack of it, affects human thoughts. Plato presents the story as a
dialogue between his brother, Glaucon, and his teacher, Socrates. The allegory illustrates one of Plato’s main
philosophical ideas, which asserts that there is an intellectual world apart from this one where ideas are eternal and can
only be reached by pure reasoning.

 The People Inside the Cave


 The allegory begins when Socrates makes Glaucon imagine a group of people living inside a cave. These people have
been living inside the cave since childhood, and their hands, legs, and neck are chained to the wall. They face an opposite
wall, where shadows are cast by objects paraded in front of a fire behind them. The people holding the objects in front of
the fire are hidden behind a wall, so the chained people can only see the shadows. In effect, the people have been
watching a puppet show all their lives. They are used to seeing shadows and believe that they are real and have even
given names to these shadows. They have no way of knowing that the shadows are just representations of real objects
because their necks are chained to the wall, and they can not look behind them.

 Furthermore, the chained people hear the constant conversations of the people holding the objects in front of the fire and
mistake their sounds as coming from the shadows. Since they have not seen anything else but shadows their entire lives,
the people inside the cave have no idea that there are real objects that are the sources of the shadows. They have no idea
that there is a world filled with all kinds of real objects outside the cave. Finally, they do not know that outside of the
cave; there is a much brighter light source compared to the fire inside.
  According to Plato, the fire inside the cave is a man-made source of light, and the shadows are nothing but the work of
artists. Plato explained that fire represents the prevailing beliefs and teachings of a period. Artists then play on these
prevailing beliefs and present their artistic interpretations through shadows.

 Plato stated that only a few people would be able to think about escaping the cave because they know no other worlds.
Only a few people can think about leaving, and it will take them several years before finally escape. Those people who
will manage to escape are called philosophers. However, their escape to the world of reality will be harrowing because it
is a steep climb from the bottom of the cave to the world above. Plato says that the prisoners represent the intellectual
condition of humanity. Most people will continue to think that the shadows on the wall are reality. These people’s senses
and minds will be fed by artists that use fire and shadows to spread their own interpretations of reality.

 One Man Leaves the Cave


 As the story goes, Plato asks us to imagine that one man is able to free himself from the chains. Now he can look behind
him and see the fire. The brightness of the fire would hurt his eyes, and he would not be able to see the objects in front of
it. If someone told him that the objects were the real things and not the shadows, he would be shocked and not believe
what he was told. The brightness of the fire would continue to hurt his eyes, and he would not be able to look at it much
longer. He would then go back to where he was chained. Looking again at the shadows on the wall, he would think that
they were reality itself and not the indistinct objects in front of the fire.

 Plato then hypothesizes that someone persuades this person to get up and forcefully pulls him up towards the elevated
entrance of the cave. Once outside the cave, the prisoner would be terrified of the strangeness of the world around him, in
addition to the pain and blindness caused by the sun’s rays. However, his eyes would slowly adjust to the world around
him. Shadows would be the first thing he would notice because that is what he had become accustomed to seeing during
his many years spent inside the cave. Next, he would be able to see people and trees, and finally, he would be able to
look at the stars and the sun itself. Plato says that once the prisoner is able to look at the sun, only then will he be able to
think clearly about it.

 Convincing Other Prisoners to Escape from the Cave


 Now that the former prisoner has seen the superiority of the outside world compared to the world inside the cave, the first
thing he would feel is pity for the other prisoners. He would then think of convincing them to get out of the cave and into
the real world to see real things. And so, the former prisoner comes back into the cave. However, as soon as he enters it,
he realizes that his eyes have become used to the bright light of the outside world and have become blind to the cave’s
darkness. The prisoners he had come to rescue see him fumbling about in the dark and conclude that the same thing
would happen if they came with him. Plato concludes that if anyone attempted to forcefully take these prisoners to the
outside world, they would be ready to kill to avoid being harmed by the outside world.

 Interpretation of the Allegory


 The allegory examines the philosophical nature of truth and how different experiences influence individuals. The
prisoners inside the cave have experienced seeing only shadows on the wall, and so for them, those are the only realities
that exist. Using this scenario, Plato illustrated that this kind of knowledge is unreliable because the shadows are always
changing. On the other hand, the prisoner who has escaped now knows that there is a better world compared to the world
inside the cave. Because of this, he would be aware that his former knowledge was unreliable. After he realizes this truth,
he can never come back to the world where he came from. To Plato, the Allegory of the Cave examines the meaning of
enlightenment and its effects.

What are a reality, knowledge, and the meaning of life? Big topics you might tackle figuratively explain existence as a journey,
down a road or across an ocean, a climb, a war, a book, a thread, a game, a window of opportunity or an all-too-short-lived flicker
of flame. 2,400 years ago one of history's most famous thinkers said life is like being chained up in a cave and forced to watch
shadows flitting across a stone wall. Pretty cheery, right?

That’s what Plato suggested in his Allegory of the Cave, found in book 7 of “The Republic” in which the philosopher envisioned
the ideal society by examining concepts like justice, truth and beauty. In the allegory, a group of prisoners have been confirmed in
a cavern since birth, with no knowledge of the outside world. They are chained, facing a wall, unable to turn their heads while the
fire behind them gives off a faint light.

Occasionally, people pass by the fire, carrying figures of animals and other objects that cast shadows on the wall. The prisoners
name and classify these illusions belong they’re perceiving actual entities. Suddenly one prisoner is freed and brought for the first
time. The sunlight hurts his eyes and he finds the new environment disorienting. When told that the thing around him is real, while
the shadows are reflections, he cannot believe it. The shadow appeared much clearer to him. But gradually his eyes adjust until he
can look at reflections in the water and at objects directly and finally at the Sun, whose light is the ultimate source of everything
he has seen. The prisoner returns to the cave to share his discovery but he is no longer used to the darkness and has a hard time
seeing the shadows on the wall. The other prisoners think the journey has made him stupid and blind and violently resist any
attempt to free them.

Plato introduces this passage as an analogy of what it’s like to be a philosopher trying to educate the public. Most people are
comfortable in their ignorance and hostile to anyone who points it out. In fact, the real-life Socrates was sentenced to death by
the Athenian government for disturbing the social order, and his student Plato spends much of “The Republic” disparaging
Athenian democracy while promoting rule by philosopher kings.

With the cave parable, Plato may be arguing that the masses are too stubborn and ignorant to govern themselves. But the allegory
has captured imitations for 2,400 years because it can be read in far more ways. Importantly, the allegory is connected to the
theory of forms, developed in Plato’s other dialogues, which holds that like the shadows on the wall, things in the physical world
are a flawed reflection of the ideal forms, such as roundness, or beauty. In this way, the cave leads to many fundamental
questions, including the origin of knowledge, the problem of representation, and the nature of reality itself. For theologians, the
ideal forms exist in the mind of a creator. For philosophers of language viewing the forms as linguistic concepts, the theory
illustrates the problem of grouping concrete things under abstract terms.

And others still wonder whether we can really know that the things outside the cave are more real than the shadows. As we go
about our lives, can we be confident in what we think know? Perhaps one day, a glimmer of light may punch a hole in your most
basic assumptions. Will you break to the struggle towards the light even if it costs you your friends and family or stick with
comfortable and familiar illusions? Truth or habit? Light or shadow? Hard choices, but if it’s any consolation you’re not alone.
There are lots of us down here.