Patricia Muench
Prof. Lecker
10/5/08
Get a Reality Check
Someone comes up to you and tells you something that sounds obnoxious. You don’t believe what they are saying because it is something different from what you’ve been taught. In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave”, one prisoner is released, and tries to come back to tell the other prisoners about the wonderful experience he had on the outside of the cave. None of the prisoners believe his story because they have always been taught a different perception of reality. The prisoners have been locked in a cave with limited mobility, and they only know about reality through the shadows on the wall. Like the prisoners, we have to learn how to accept reality for what it is, even if it has unexpected turns. This requires being open-minded, taking risks, being curious, and questioning what is really out there in the world.
Throughout life, you are taught many lessons, but those lessons are not the full explanation of reality. For example, the prisoners, since childhood, have only been shown shadows that barely depict a story of reality. However, they don’t know that beyond those shadows, there is so much more of reality to experience. Until the prisoners are released, they will stay chained up with extremely limited mobility. These prisoners and their experiences can be compared to ourselves, the average citizens, and what our perception is of becoming a soldier. To prove this statement, Plato directly states, “Like ourselves, I replied; for in the first place prisoners so confined would have seen nothing of themselves or of one another, except the shadows thrown…” (Plato 319). This statement is important because in today’s world, we know tons of information about reality, but we don’t know everything. For example, all of the news stations tell us about the war in Iraq each day. However, what they show isn’t even half of what actually goes on there. Soldiers come back trying to tell us all of the good and bad experiences that they’ve had over in Iraq. Just like the prisoners, we don’t want to believe the soldiers and their stories. We are taught from childhood what a soldier is and what their job is, but we only know what a soldier’s lifestyle is through what people tell us about it. Like the prisoners, we are scared to become a soldier because it is dangerous, and it will change our whole lifestyle and what we know of it.
To every experience, there are steps that you have to take before it. Plato explains that the free prisoner is first introduced to the cutouts when he is released. The prisoner’s reaction is explained by Plato as, “Would he not be perplexed and believe the objects now shown him to be not so real as what he formerly saw? Yes, not nearly so real.” (Plato 320). This showed that the prisoner would have to question the guards as to what each object is because he really does not understand any of the objects and their meanings. The prisoner’s experience is just like when a soldier first decides he wants to become a soldier, and he is set up to work with a recruitment officer. The soldier does not know what each of the different army jobs are, and what best fits his or her skills. This is the time where the soldier might ask a numerous amount of questions, same as the prisoner. The transition into the second step is probably the hardest because the prisoner and soldier just learned something new, but the transition to the second step is too quick and extremely hard to handle.
The second step is the hardest because it finally hits you that you are learning a lot of information. You already learned so much from the first step, but everything starts to move quickly. The prisoner’s second step is to see the fire that produces the shadows, which is extremely painful and almost forces the body to turn away. Just like Plato states, “And if he were forced to look at the fire-light itself, would not his eyes ache, so that he would try to escape and turn back to the things which he could see distinctly…” (Plato 320). For the prisoner, this statement proves that if someone sees something painful, they would rather revert back to what they are used to and their comfort zone. In the life of a soldier, they go through a nine-week course of basic combat training. It is both physically and emotionally challenging, which causes some soldiers to question whether they want to be a soldier or not. This is where soldiers doubt themselves because they don’t know what is ahead of them. The course is something totally new to them. Once the second step is completed, you’ve learned the basics to reality, which you can now use to make something out of them.
In the final step, you realize that the hard work was worth it because you love what you are becoming. You love your job and want to know how to make the best of it. You also want to test out your newly-learned skills. At this point, the prisoner takes his final steps into the outside world. The prisoner feels scared at first being blinded by the light and seeing so many objects that are all new to him. He would find his eyes, “so full of its radiance that he could not see a single one of the things that he was now told were real? Certainly he would not see them all at once” (Plato 320). After the prisoner understands the objects, he could become more curious about reality and what is made up of. The soldier has the same experience in the sense that he or she goes into advanced individual training. The soldier will be able to learn how to fully understand his or her job and what skills it requires. Then, the soldier will be able to use those skills to come up with new skills, and also use them out in war and combat. He or she will be able to complete the job at hand, which is fighting in a war. The soldier will fight for his country, which will make the soldier have an abundance of experience. Once the prisoner and the soldier understand reality, they have only learned their full lesson if their experience can be taught to someone else.
When understanding reality, you grasp a ton of information. For the prisoner, he learned that, “…it is the Sun that produces the seasons and the course of the year and controls everything in the visible world, and moreover is in a way the cause of all that he and his companions used to see.” (Plato 321). For the soldier, he or she would learn that war is made up of violence and combat, but sometimes, it is to make the area a better place. If you want to come back from this experience, it cannot happen overnight. The prisoner would feel different, and his eyes, “… would be filled with darkness. He might be required once more to deliver his opinion on those shadows, in competition with the prisoner who had never been released, while his eyesight was still dim and unsteady.” (Plato 321). This feeling of the prisoner’s is extremely important because it shows how there are consequences, even for doing something good.
Consequences may include that even though someone is greater in one reality, they might not necessarily be greater in the other reality. The prisoner finds that even though he is greater on the outside of the cave, when he comes back into the cave, he is not that great at all. The soldier was proud of his experience in war, but when the prisoner comes back, he or she has to deal with depression, and other post-traumatic feelings. The soldiers have been so used to the lifestyle of fighting in a war, that when they come back to their own country, it’s hard adjusting to a new lifestyle, even if they aren’t suffering from depression. Many people won’t understand why the soldier would put himself or herself through such a challenging experience, if they knew they would have to deal with those consequences. The prisoner will have to try and explain his experience with the other prisoners. They won’t believe him because it is so different from the reality they have lived in for their whole lives. The soldier would try to tell all of what was happening at war in Iraq, but we wouldn’t want to believe it because on the news, we were always told something not as drastic as what is actually going on. For the prisoners and for us, we have difficulty accepting the truth and reality sometimes because it can just be too hard to handle sometimes.
Belief has to come from within, and most of the time, you won’t understand something until you have experienced it first-hand. The prisoner experienced leaving the cave for the first time and was able to understand reality. A citizen would be able to experience war and what it truly means to be a soldier. For the other prisoners, they didn’t accept reality and what it was, based on what the free prisoner told them. For a soldier, many of us still today don’t know the full story of what is going with the war in Iraq. Many details we don’t want to accept from soldiers because they are too gruesome or too good to be true. The lesson towards becoming more open-minded needs to continue, and we all need to face reality.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Patricia Muench
Prof. Lecker
10/5/08
Why Revise this
paper?
The paper I chose to revise was the analysis essay of Plato’s
“The Allegory of the Cave”. This paper was the most challenging for me, which
is my main reason for choosing to rewrite it. At first I didn’t understand too
well how to do the assignment, but after these six weeks, I feel like I could
write the paper so much better. Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” has a great
concept behind it, and I wanted to express it more through this revision.
Some
of the changes that were made in the revision were inspired by an event that is
going on in today’s world. This is something that I felt more comfortable
about, but yet challenged to express it. My inspiration was to relate the
prisoner’s life to a soldier. A soldier’s life plays a big part in present day
reality. Instead of relating the prisoner’s life to a student, it felt much
easier to relate it to a soldier’s life. My idea and the comment that was
written on the paper also made me change my introduction paragraph. At the
beginning of the course, my introduction paragraphs were very weak, so I just
went with the style of introduction paragraph that I was strongest with. The
style that I am strongest with is when I put the reader starting off in the
situation that is being discussed. Instead of jumping right into a general
statement about the essay, I wrote, “Someone comes up to you and tells you
something that sounds obnoxious. You don’t believe what they are saying because
it is something different from what you’ve been taught.” The reader, I feel,
gets the attention of the paper this way best. Also, to change structure, I
gave a main thesis, a main second body paragraph sentence, and then broke it
down from there. When I wrote the analysis of an argument paper on “The Naked
Source” by Linda Simon, it forced me to have a set structure. That is what I
learned from for this revision paper. In the old paper, I jumped around a lot,
so that is why I changed it to breaking the essay down more. I kept the lesson
theme, but then I broke it down by the steps the soldier and the prisoner took.
This helped my structure stay organized. Lastly, I changed the conclusion by
relating it more to the introduction paragraph. I made a general first
statement of the conclusion paragraph, but then I clarified what the prisoner
and the soldier did that related back to the introduction paragraph. Many
changes were made because my writing was all over the place.
With
every essay, there are grammar mistakes. I tried to get rid of pronouns, such
as he, she, and they. I made sure that I would show with evidence, and not just
tell about something. When I talked about the prisoners representing your
average citizens, I didn’t explain it enough, or even at all, the first time I
wrote the essay. To avoid including grammar mistakes in the new essay, I kept
some sentences from the old essay, and then got rid of the rest of the
sentences. For instance, a sentence I kept, but with slight changes was,
“Throughout your life, you are taught many lessons, but those lessons are not
the full explanation of reality”. I also shortened some sentences and
paragraphs.
Overall, it was not the worst essay ever written. However, the essay just needed more structure and more power within it. With relating the prisoner’s life to a soldier’s life, it was much easier than trying to relate it to something that I didn’t really understand. I rewrote an introduction and a conclusion so that there would be more power within the essay. Through Plato’s “The Allegory of a Cave”, the concepts were more distinguished in this new essay. I was more open-minded and clear of distracting thoughts when revising this essay.
5