Allegory of the Cave Journal

I've learned a lot from reading the Allegory of the Cave. Plato successfully uses symbolism to convey his thoughts of education and society. It makes the reader connect elements from the text to their own personal lives. For example, what does the cave represent? I personally think it represents ignorance. All the prisoners were originally in the cave, and were all ignorant to the truth of the reality outside. When one of the prisoners sees the truth outside of the cave, he has escaped his ignorance for that moment, but retreats back after being blinded. This shows that we can in fact escape ignorance - even if it hurts to face it, but we eventually will retreat or return to our original state of being ignorant.

Plato also shows the importance of education, that it is in fact good to be open-minded and question things around us. If the other prisoners were open-minded and actually began to question the shadows, they may have been able to see their ignorance, and get closer to escaping it. The same thing can also be applied to us, if we are more open-minded and question things around us, instead of simply accepting things we are told and taught, we should be able to see the reality. Finally, Plato shows that getting out of the cave is something independent - we can't rely on others to be able to see the truth. Being able to see the truth is something we need to drive ourselves towards, but this doesn't mean that people cannot help.