...impact the message conveyed. Plato took the liberty to separate his story into stages as the prisoner starts to come to the realization that he has been living an illusion all along. As the illusion turns into a realization, one becomes familiar with the interpretation Plato intended for one to understand the importance of education. Plato had the assertion that man was born ignorant yet had the capacity to fulfill his own personal knowledge. Socrates begins to set up a scenario where there are human beings who have been living in a cave since birth. The prisoners are “chained so that they cannot move” and only able to view a low wall that was places in front of them (Plato 66). A fire is their only source of light and with that they are able to see their shadows. In this part of the story, the prisoners are unaware that there is more to offer in the world than the fire and their shadows. They are ignorant yet unaware of this because to them it was natural to only see such few things. The cave was the only thing they were aware of and this prevented them from building personal knowledge and fully becoming enlightened. The cave symbolized a barrier that the prisoners were unable to cross. It was what they were used to and they didn’t have the knowledge to realize the right way to live vs. the wrong way. The feeling of change is something they had yet to experience. As a prisoners is released, the light causes him to “suffer sharp pains” and he begins to contemplate what he...
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...home money. I wanted to experience having a job myself and see how it was. After I had a taste of having a job and having responsibilities I saw how difficult it was. My experience is related to Plato’s, “Allegory of the Cave” because like the prisoner’s I too was blinded by the truth. When I was a kid I remember going out every Friday and eating out with my family. I do not remember a time when we did not do that. I believed it was really easy to go to work every day and make money. My dad was an executive general manager at a trucking company named JB Hunt. My dad often told me that to have a good job you must have a good college degree. I did not believe him, I believed that to have a job you just have to go look for one. Like the prisoners in the allegory of the cave, the shadows to me were seeing what I could and that was my parents bringing home money. I did not see how they did it or how difficult it was to have a job. When I finally turned sixteen I was old enough to have a job. I finally got to the point where I could experience it myself and determine how difficult it was to have a job. At the beginning it was a little hard but not as bad as I had expected and I always told myself, “see this is not that bad,” I could do anything I wanted without an education. After I graduated from high school, I got a job as a kayak assembler, making $14 dollars an hour. I thought to myself this is the life being eighteen and having a great job. I decided to move out on my own and...
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...Studies Basic Human Rights Taken In the concentration camps prisoners had everything and every right taken away. First when they arrived they were stripped of their personal belongings. No one should have their personal stuff taken from them and be humiliated and stripped down naked in front of everyone. The prisoners were then treated as if they were a piece of garbage that could be disposed of as if they meant nothing. The prisoner destiny was in the hand of someone who had no right to choose if the prisoner lived or died, but somehow managed to get the privilege of making this choice as if they were God. The prisoners were not feed properly at all. They were rationed out bread and soup. They were never given enough so they were slowly dwindling away of starvation. The prisoners poor nutrition left them open to many diseases their bodies were not able to fight off in its unhealthy state. Food is a right everyone has should have food to eat! Especially these prisoners they worked hard day in and out. It is one thing if someone sits around does not work or try to provide for themselves and has no food. They then have no one but themselves to blame. That wasn’t the case with these prisoners if any one deserved to eat it was them! The prisoners were stripped of any dignity they may have had. They were beating and talked down to. They were required to use the restroom in a bucket in front of others. You had prisoners that were well respected doctors and people of importance but...
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...which in due course brings him to the Form of the Good. He tells the Allegory of the Cave as a conversation between his teacher Socrates who inspired many of Plato's philosophical theories and Glaucon. In the dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave, in which prisoners have been kept since their childhood, and each of them is held where they are all chained so that their legs and necks are unable to turn or allow them to move. This leaves them in a predicament where they’re forced to look at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a fire and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway (bridge), on which people can walk. These people are shadow play, and they are carrying objects, in the shape of human and animal figures, as well as everyday items. The prisoners could only see these flickering images on the wall, since they could not move their heads; and so, naturally enough, they assumed the images to be real, rather than just shadowy representations of what is actually real. They believe the shadows are true, as well as the echoed voices they hear; they also believe to be true. Then one day one prisoner is released. This prisoner walks up into the sunlight, which...
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...humans are all ignorant to the truth. It’s a story in which prisoners, representing the human race, are all chained to chairs. The chains represent our ignorance to the true forms and the chairs are our tendency to stay with what we find familiar and comfortable. The people are chained facing a wall so that they can only look ahead of them. There is a light in the cave which comes from a fire. The fire is what is used to create fake “form” shadows which the people believe are real. The shadows represent the politics, human culture and superstitious beliefs. One of the prisoners is freed, this one prisoner is seen as a potential philosopher however they have to be dragged away from the shadows as they still believe the shadows are reality and they don’t want to leave what’s comfortable to them and venture into the unknown. The person who frees the prisoner is a representation of a true philosopher, possibly Plato himself. This person recognises the illusion of the cave and wants to educate those who are still trapped in the illusion. This idea could come from Plato’s belief that philosophers should govern society as they are completely motivated by their wisdom and selflessness. After the prisoner is freed he is dragged up through the cave past the people who are making the shadows. The prisoner is then taken up and out of the cave to the outside world which in Plato’s vision is the realm of the forms. The prisoner initially doesn’t understand what he is seeing but learns to...
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...Plato’s Truth in “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara Imagine a prisoner who was born in a cave and have never seen anything besides a wall is one day released. When he leaves the cave and approaches the light, his eyes hurt and “he is not able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.” This metaphoric example shows that when a person is placed in an uncomfortable situation, he is first in denial. He doesn’t want to accept things that he sees as reality, continuing to live according to his old false perceptions. As he looks longer at the sun he slowly starts to realize that his perceptions could be wrong. He now sees the light and a new world, which he never thought exists. Sylvia, the heroine of the short story “The Lesson” by...
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...be interpreted in many ways. Depending on the point of view of the reader, the message can describe the trials and tribulations of man in general to the roadway of life and all of the detours along the way. The first entry of the allegory has Socrates describing a cave in which there are prisoners. The prisoners have limited sight since they are chained at the neck and legs and can see in only one direction. There is light from a fire which allows the prisoners to see shadows on the wall form passing men. My interpretation of this starts at the beginning. Actually one line which speaks of the prisoners; …here they have been from their childhood… (Plato (interpretation by Benjamin Jowett), 2012) I feel this is the interpretation of man from his birth. The cave represents the town or village of birth for the person (prisoner). The prisoners are the people born into and raised in this village. The chains around their neck and legs are the limits of the village from which the children have yet to venture past. The wall represents the village limits which is the barrier to the world. The fire casting shadows tells of merchants that come to the village to trade. The children (prisoners) see these people briefly with little or no interaction with them. This represents a world beyond the village limits (the wall); …men passing along the wall, carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials… (Plato) These men...
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...15 years ago A dark, stormy night with foul tension in the air and a sharp turbulent wind kicking up sand reaching into a dimly lit cave where multiple shady looking people wearing robes with 5 of them being the only ones wearing colors and two sides parting into half standing parallel to each other with different garment colors, black and white. The 5 with colors start to make a formation which is similar to an occult circle and speak “The 2 who have been chosen by the black and white come join us brethren in making history, come and succeed with us in forming the final result for the spectrum!” The 2 step up and come in to join, making the circle larger, but then start placing children on the ground and then one begins to speak “ This child has come from surviving a fire thanks to a fireman’s help, I took him from his family to represent the fiery passion of the color red so he can liberate this world with his passion, so for his name I shall Choose the name Aiden.” Then another one moves in and holds up another baby and begins to kneel and gathers thought in his mind and goes “This one represent the beauty of earth and how nature can heal the deepest scars, I’ve killed dozens and this one, was the one that remained, healing through the harshest of strains I put on him therefore I dub him Terra.” The third one puts the baby gently down, slowly and begins “Calming and soothing while being able to portray emotion, this one seems like many others yet, just her gaze gave...
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...------------------------------------------------- PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE ------------------------------------------------- (flow of events) Plato's allegory of the cave describes a group of prisoners living in a dark cave. They are bound in chains preventing them from moving easily. Being stuck in the same place and position all the time, they have nothing to do but stare at the wall in front of them. A fire casts a light against that wall on a platform in the cave. While people on the outside of the cave go their own business, the objects they carry cast unclear shadows on the wall. As a result, the prisoners in the cave spend their time trying to figure out what the shadows represent, assuming that sounds from the outside came from the shadows themselves. One day, a prisoner was dragged outside from his restraints by force. He was disoriented and confused when he saw the outside world for the first time. As time went by, he began to see the brilliance of the world and returned to the cave to tell the other prisoners about what he saw. His fellow prisoners think that he has gone crazy and lost his mind, rather than being relieved to hear of what else the world holds. Since they only know life within the confines of the cave, they assume that is all there is to life. ------------------------------------------------- ELEMENTS Cave - represents the physical world of illusions in which most people live. Shadows on the wall - symbolize the assumptions and guesses...
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...| | | | | | | | |EARLY DAYS IN CUSTODY – RECEPTION IN, FIRST NIGHT IN CUSTODY, AND INDUCTION TO CUSTODY | |This instruction applies to : |Reference : | | | | |Prisons |PSI 74/2011 | |Issue Date |Effective Date |Expiry Date | |21 December 2011 |1 January 2012 |20 December 2015 | |Issued on the authority of |NOMS Agency Board ...
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...in a cave. These four different stages are metaphors that describe what he believed to be the different stages of knowledge: imagination, thought, understanding and good. He illustrates his metaphor by depicting a group of prisoners who have spent their entire life in the darkened cave and their passage through the distinct stages of the cave, with them starting at the lower stages of the cave and proceeding to the higher stages and eventually out of the cave, however Plato believed that we as humans are not capable of reaching the last stage of knowledge (good) and that we all stop somewhere along the first 3 stages. Just as the prisoner has to reach an understanding of the sun to start learning anything, we must first use education to understand the highest level of knowledge, and then we can start really learning. The cave is built with its mouth towards the light, so that the light reaches threw the cave to the wall at the end. There is a group of humans that sit facing the wall. They have been in the cave since birth and their legs and necks are bound by chains so that they can only look forwards to the wall, and not behind them or to their sides. Behind and above them raised way with a low way built along it, with a fire on one side and the prisoners on the other side facing the wall. There is statues along the top of the wall, which are operated by a group of people hiding behind the wall. The fire creates light which casts shadows along the wall that the...
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...ignorance of the philosopher’s teachings. The philosopher’s teachings are attempts to enlighten the prisoners who are bound by chains so they can vicariously experience the true good in the world. Socrates, in this conversation with Glaucon, paints a picture describing a world where people are born as chained prisoners that are forced to stare at a cave wall their entire life. Moreover, there is a fire shining behind them that reflects onto the cold stone wall. Behind the fire, guards pass holding artifacts that cast the statue shadows onto the wall and the prisoners play memorization games identifying these forms as “trees, men, and women”. However, one prisoner is freed and begins to look around the cave. For the first time, the prisoner sees the blazing fire and the actual artifacts that used to be only dim, memorized shadows. To the prisoner’s dismay, he is dragged out of the cave and into the scorching sun. He squirms and shrieks from the pain of the overwhelming light. Eventually, the torture fades as his eyes strengthen and he discovers his suffering was not a punishment, but becomes a reward. The new light around him unleashes the prisoner into discovery finding the stuatues were only mere imitations of flourishing vegetation and human life. He is flabbergasted that the prisoners in the cave think the dim representations are the real forms of life when the prisoners do not enjoy the forms in all their senses of colors,...
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...A Hanging Commentry The poem A Hanging has a very odd mood for what is happening in the poem. The poem talks about people in jail and an inmate on his way to be put to death. The prisoners do not show any sign of remorse after the inmate is put to death and gone on with there everyday activities, some even laughing and having a good time. The author uses many literary elements in the story such as imagery, simile, mood, foreshadowing thought and climax. The author uses these literary elements in order to provide the reader with a better understanding of the poem and to decribe how the prisoners handle the hanging. Orwell uses a bountiful amount of imagery throughout the poem. He uses the imagery to let the reader depict a picture and get a better understanding of the poem. One example of imagery in the poem is in the eighth paragraph "At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel." This quote is giving a sample of the tremendous amout of imagery in the poem. The imagery is present in describing how his muscles move into place in every step and how his hair flows and dances in the wind. Another example of imagery is when Orwell describes the hangeman "The Hangman, a gray haired convict in the white uniform...". The hangman is described as a fellow prisioner and it gives the reader the visual of the hangman dressed in white sort of like a ghost...
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...for the absolute truth and the people who really do see the truth using rational thought. I really believe that the story can be explained in parts 4 parts, the cave, the shadows, the escape and return, and the game . These parts explain the story of humanities perceptions. In Platos main theory, he explains the dark cave represents people or who strongly believe that wisdom comes from what we see , feel ,and hear in the world . The cave shows that believers of this absolute knowledge are trapped in a cave of misleading wealth of information. Now these prisoners have been here since birth, and have never seen day light or the opening of the cave. The prisoners were bound to rocks, their arms and legs were tied and their head is tied still so that they would not be able to look at anything but the stonewall in front of them witch represents a pritive movie screen. This obviously to me is representing the prisoners accepting the fact that there in no other things in life to live for just because they have not scene anything but shadows on a wall. Some people in life to some point can say they live in a cave and see no way out, for example, dead end jobs. As the story progresses, Misterious people outside the cave walk along this pathway , where light from a fire ,...
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...ENG 202: Brandel Of Prisoners & Superheroes Shalin Patel Poem Title: Prisoner No. 786 Drama Title: Love is Bl(ow)ind Creative Non-Fiction Title: v/s The Biased Media of the 21st Century Fiction Title: Sub-Urban Superhero Reflection Essay Included Total Word Count: 5095 Prisoner No. 786 I, prisoner number 786, stick my head out through these iron bars. I watch as days, months and years turn into eons. The smell of the warm moist mud reminds me of all those carefree afternoons I spent on my mama’s porch watching the rain pass by. The scorching sun on my face reminds me of the sweetest iced tea my sister used to so carefully prepare. The unflinching rain at times takes me back to the fields where I would play soccer for hours at end with my cousins. The bitter cold within my bones reminds me of the steaming hot barbecue my father would make so passionately, never failing to impress. This man standing outside my cell tells me this is not my country, then why does it feel like I’m right at home? He says I’m not like him, then why do I feel like he’s like me? I, prisoner number 786, stick my head out through these iron bars. I stare towards the heavens as a white fairy descends from the village of dreams. I don’t know who she is, but she talks like she’s all mine. When I listen to her, it feels like I want to go out there and live again. When she makes all those fake promises, she makes me want to believe in myself again. I, prisoner number 786, stick my head out through these...
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