Blog 2

I found “The Allegory of the Cave” to be a well thought out descriptive dialogue. As the dialogue progressed you were told of prisoners being shackled in chains facing a wall with nothing more than shadowy images casted down from a bright fire behind them. After reading the dialogue you begin to see that there laid a greater purpose for this dialogue to be written in such a manner. There was an underlined message that one’s face valued reality and the true reality around them was two different things. Socrates said “To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” this piece of dialogue illustrates that people will only hold value to that of which they see with their own eyes. The images on the walls within the cave were the reality of those prisoners. There was nothing else to change this reality for them or show them otherwise. These people had been down in this dark cave for so long hidden away from the reality that was always around them that even if they were to be shown a different one they’d ignore it and hold on tight to their own. Socrates added “Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes” once freed and in the light away from the darkness the reality of the one who escaped changed. He no longer shared the same reality of those still back in the dark cave. However this also came with a cost “Let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death” this was to show that anyone with a different idea or reality would be put to death if they interrupted or tried to change the reality of everyone in that cave. The prisoners in this cave did not even wish to ever think about ascending after that. They just would rather continue living life in darkness than turning away towards the light.