Essay about Allegory of the Cave

Submitted By AlexanderZhang
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Pages: 4
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Is our reality limited by the ignorance we possess? Two short stories that talks about the barrier of reality and what we perceive of reality are Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Amanda Coyne’s Mother’s Day in Federal Prison. The Allegory of the Cave explains how cave prisoners are chained up forced to face forward ever since they were born. They are exposed to a light and a fire that a puppeteer is creating shadows that seems to create images like other people, animals, shapes and etc. This brings them closer to reality, but do they know what’s reality to have a base understanding of it? Their ideas of reality are what they would see and have a permanent understanding of it, but once they see reality for what it really is, they crumble because comprehending it is terrifying. And in Amanda Coyne’s Mother’s Day in Federal Prison talks about the difference in reality the prisoners face and their families. Only the prisoners understands the truth to the justice system. While everyone else believes they are bad people just because they are in jail, most of them are just normal people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Within Mother’s Day in Federal Prison, a woman within the story talks about her daughter was in prison solely because she was innocently in love. She was unaware of whatever actions her boyfriend was doing. She waited in the car while her boyfriend was grabbing the drugs. Consequently the boyfriend talked and received merely 3 years in prison, while she had received 10 years for “conspiracy”, but the truth was she had nothing to tell, she wasn’t able to say anything that she didn’t have knowledge of. (Coyne,88)Although this situation sounds biased towards the mother telling the story, the daughter was ignorant, the fact that she didn’t understand the truth that was happening behind her back. This reveals the injustice in our legal system which we are protected by. Also the barrier towards only the prisoners and their families know the truth and understand the situation at hand. She can relate to being a prisoner within the allegorical cave because she didn’t know the reality. She would see shadows/images which could be an analogy the fake appearance the boyfriend would put on for her. But she was astonished when it all happened as to she had high hopes for her future to finish her degree in dental hygiene/respiratory therapy at the local community college and most important taking care of her kids as a mother. (The Long Goodbye,88)
An idea that Plato brings up is what’s being learnt isn’t absolutely the truth, it’s based on perspective. It takes personal experience, to see it for themselves and for them to understand the reality/truth. You can’t insert information or visions into a person who hasn’t experienced it themselves. (Plato, 108) However, if one of the cave prisoners was to climb
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