Comparison of Allegory of the Cave and Giants in the Earth

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a short story that describes a few people that have been imprisoned in a cave all of their life. They have never seen anything except the shadows of puppets of men and animals. One of the prisoners is drug out of the cave into the real world. The story continues to describe his change in the way he views the world and how he views the cave. Beret Hansa, a main character in Giants in the Earth, leaves her homeland, Norway, to settle in the Dakota Territory with her husband and three children in mid- 1800s America. Her journey into this new world transforms her in a negative way. She sees the new land as “wild” and sinful and drives herself into depression and eventually insanity. Beret and the freed prisoner are opposites in that Beret sees her new home as a sinful place and longs for Norway while the freed prisoner embraces the new world and compares his old world to hell.

The Allegory of the Cave starts by describing the setting. There are prisoners in a cave that is lighted by a fire. They are chained by the feet and neck and have never seen anything all their lives except the shadows of puppets. Then one of the prisoners is set free and is told that everything he has seen is an illusion. He is then forced to leave the cave and see the outside world. The story also gives the reader a description of the transformation of the freed prisoner as he is drug out of the cave into the world and how he perceives his new surroundings.

Giants in the Earth tells us the story of a Norwegian family, the Hansas, settling in America. The family consists of Beret, her husband Per, and their children Ole Hansa, Store-Hans Hansa, Anna Marie Hansa, and Peder Victorious. They settle in the Dakota Territory and build a sod house. At Christmas of the first year, Peder Victorious is born. Beret sees everything in her new world as evil and longs to return to Norway through the entire story.

When the two characters first arrive in their new surroundings they have different reactions. Beret is unimpressed by the homestead. Her first reaction to the settlement is “here something was about to go wrong (Rolvaag 28).” She immediately is not happy with her new home and starts assuming that something bad will happen. When the freed prisoner is released into the world he does not know how exactly to perceive it because he has never been outside the cave before. His eyes are “so full of its [light] that he could not see a single one of the things that he was now told were real (Plato, The Cave 229).” He does not see his surroundings at first because the light of the sun overwhelms him. We as readers can relate