Allegory of the Cave by Plato

Duffie 1

Marlon Duffie

Nick Bennett

English 122

31/01/17

Life is a Novel

In “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, the meaning of life speculates off the idea of prisoners and shadows. Plato argues that the things we see are not reality but just a reflection of it. Thus, being the shadows. In the reading, the main objective is to pretty much get out of the cave and be able to finally see the truth. The truth is a metaphor of the sunlight from the sun. His descriptive phrases explains how the entire process is painful but definitely worth it. Once you see the truth, you will be able to live a better and happier life. I personally agree with Plato, with his idea that getting to the truth is a very hard objective, and that the world itself may contain objects that are shadows, and we aren’t able to see them 100% clearly without a little guidance from one another. The only way to see past the shadows is if the truth were to be revealed. Not that I don’t believe in what Plato is saying, but I feel like a better metaphor would be, “Life is like a novel, we are the authors and everyday is a new page”.

In every novel, each page that you read is something different than the last. It’s literally a metaphor of life itself. Each day that passes by, something new occurs. It can be either good or bad. Not only can I personally relate to this but so can everybody else. It’s physically impossible for one to be able to experience the same thing everyday. And by everyday I mean every second of the day, every minute of the day, hour, etc. There’s no way everything that happened to you one day is going to happen the next day. Some things may be similar but there will always be a new occurrence that was added. Just yesterday, I woke up, went to work, talked to friends and continued on with my day. The next day, the sort of things that happened previously were repeated, but a few more things were added. I went to get something to eat, studied for a little bit, and played some video games. Two things that were definitely different, was the weather. It went from being gloomy yesterday, to the sun sharing its beautiful light the next day.

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