“The Allegory of the Cave” explains the perspective of prisoners who are tied down with chains in a cave of darkness since their birth. They cannot turn their heads or bodies and are obligated to look at the front wall to the cave. They are to watch as shadows dance across the wall, only understanding those are their reality. Then one of the prisoners becomes freed, He now turns around and his view on what life was has now changed.
The freed prisoner then would“be too dazzled to make out the objects whose shadows he had been used to see” (Plato’s, paragraph 15, line 5) He can now see light and what was causing those shadows. These figures would be hard to make out what they had been and he would be frightened, wanting to go back to the darkness he once was in. After adjusting to the new light and new figures, He gradually gets comfortable with this new atmosphere, “shadows, and then the images of men and things reflected in water, and later on the things themselves” (Plato’s, paragraph 21, line 3).
For him, He sees that the figures were real and they were just his imagination anymore. He was able to “then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?” (Plato’s, paragraph 21, line 4) He couldn’t see those shadows as they once were and this is what he believed to be true.
