If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a parable speaks a thousand truths. We love stories with hidden meanings, whether it's a movie, a book, or performance, the underlying truth that sparks the "A-ha moment" captures us. That's what parables do.
Parables have been told for centuries across all cultures, and they're just as profound today. It all started in the ancient times where a few teachers, who possessed the power of knowledge, used these parables to teach important lessons to their chosen students. The parable is a very simple story, and yet not that straightforward. The naive manifest is the perfect way to hide the inner meaning. This latent content could only be understood only by those who prove themselves able to do that. As …show more content…
These philosophers were the authors of the ancient parables, and used them as a way to teach a few elected students, who could prove themselves able to understand them. The student had to be a good listener, but first he had to prompt the storytelling with a question. Then, his teacher, answered with a parable. “The Allegory of The Cave” is an ancient parable used by Socrates, who is a classical Greek philosopher, to teach his student Glaucon, what is like to be a lover of wisdom and a seeker of the truth. He starts his lesson with this …show more content…
Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant!” (Plato 2)
We can see that, even with a parable originating many years ago, Socrates teaches an important lesson to his student and to the readers of our modern society, that most people prefer to remain in chains and to see only shadows of the truth. Only the few, and the wise, are willing to free themselves from the shackles and look the truth in the face, even if it is blinding at first.
As the time passed, our society evolved, and with that, the parables changed too. Our life has become more intense and we are facing many more different problems than the ancient people. But living at these modern times, we have a better life and we can enjoy more things, as the entertaining science is advancing more and more. At the same time, the modern day parables have become more literary and better elaborated. Being a parable, they still contain the manifest and the latent content. The authors have evolved too, from teachers to artists, and because of that, there is an absence of the teacher-student figures. This artistic touch has made the parables less straightforward than they used to be. I do not think that we are supposed to walk away with a clear and obvious lesson. Instead, we have to do a lot of interpretation because it gives us many things to think