Allegory of the Cave

The prisoners is Socrates’s story are chained down since birth, unable to move even their heads, staring straight ahead at a blank wall. Then behind the prisoners the is a fire off in the distance, casting their shadows on the wall. In between the fire and the prisoners is a road, on which people walk carrying items, and thus casting even more shadows on the wall. Watching this all their lives, the prisoners eventually consider this to be reality. The prisoners symbolize all the people in the world, because everyone has their own take on what is real, and what is just an illusion.

Socrates imagines that the initial response of a prisoner who is released from the cave and exposed to the light would think it’s an illusion, and that the shadows they’ve seen all their lives are what’s actually real. The prisoner’s response once he became accustomed to the light, would be to feel pity for the people who are still chained in the cave, who cannot see what he sees. He now thinks that he knows what is actually real, but actually he just has a different view of things after seeing both sides.

Socrates envisioned that the people who had seen the lights should become the leaders of their civilizations. One characteristic about these people, that Socrates thinks should be leaders, is that they should not want to be a leader. If they did want to be a leader they would care more about holding/attaining office, rather than doing good for their community.