...Plato describes a cave, in which there are three prisoners. The prisoners are tied down to rocks, arms and legs bound and their head is tied so that they can only see the stonewall in front of them. These prisoners have been here since birth and no nothing about the world outside of this cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire and a walkway to separate them. People walk along this walkway daily carrying a lot of things: animals, plants, wood, and stone. The prisoners obviously cannot see these objects, yet only the shadows because they cannot look above or to the side of them, but only in front to that old gray stonewall. Because of the fact that they know nothing other than this cave, they have not seen any of these objects in real life. These shadows that they see seem real to them and they believe that is so. Plato suggest that the prisoners would play a game to see who could guess this next object, or “shadow” in there case. If one of the prisoners were to guess the object correctly the others would praise him as if he were a god of nature....
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...If you have never been a Prisoner of War (POW), you are extremely lucky. The prisoners of war during the World War II, (1939-1945) were treated poorly with no respect or consideration and were given the living conditions worse than animals. It was an extremely bad situation that no human being could survive. They were mistreated, manhandled, beat and even shot defending their country. No one wanted to go to war, but for those men who did, and for those who survived as POWs will always regret it. The Prisoners of War were kept in concentration camps, where it was day to day constant dying and suffering and separation of the family with unconditional weather. 1 They had no real shelter, and kept busy by working, and the odd time even got a chance to play baseball, soccer or some athletic game to stay in shape. 2 They were surrounded by twenty-four hour guard surveillance in the middle of nowhere, so it would be quite useless to attempt to escape, especially at the risk of being gunned down at any given time. The POW were always having to turn their back and keep an eye out for one another. They were considered to be "hostages" and were treated like the enemy. The concentration camps were not very large but were numerous. They contained about 500-600 warriors and were divided into groups of under sixteen, older than sixteen, and of course by gender (Male and Female). 3 This caused many problems with the POWs as they were split from their...
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...The government prevented more mistreatment of prisoners of war very well by issuing multiple laws and charging the accused enemy with murder. Prisoners of war are people who are taken prisoner during a military conflict. There are modern laws pertaining to the treatment of prisoners of war that date back to the middle ages, but the most common source of modern international laws about the prisoners’ treatment is found in the Geneva Convention. Early in the Civil War, the prisons were easily able to hold the numbers of prisoners, partially due to the prisoner exchange agreement. Later, the number of facilities used to hold prisoners was forced to increase. Prisoners of war were treated very poorly in the Civil war, and the public was outraged...
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...Controversies of prisoners of war The book “Unbroken” was a seemingly impossible tale of triumph and survival of an Olympic runner and WWII veteran named Louis Zamperini. He constantly had to overcome adversity in his early years, for he was an immigrant from Italy and a trouble maker before his brother Pete steered him into running track. This immediately turned him around as he did well enough to in running to break all sorts if local records, which were accomplished while his competitors were trying to sabotage his runs. This qualified him for the 1936 Olympic in Berlin, where he met Hitler. He still had running aspirations but felt he had no choice other than fighting in the world due to the fact that the 1940 Olympics were cancelled. So he joined the Air Crops and while flying in plane suspected to break down, he crashed in the sea with two other friends and was stranded there for over 47 days. Louis overcomes great adversity again when Japanese air assaults targeted them and they jumped in the water to get cover while fighting off hungry sharks. After the planes retreated Louis and his friends took turns swatting the sharks trying to jump at them while the other kept the boat afloat by blowing like a mad man. After they were successful in doing this, they saw land but were intercepted by a Japanese boat that took them to the notorious POW camp known as Naoetsu. This is where the infamous prison guard called “The Bird” decided that he was going to do everything to break...
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... Image Analysis Essay on the torture of a prisoner by U.S army officers The picture shows two U.S army officers pointing a rifle at a man who appears to be, based on his complexion, Middle Eastern, perhaps Iraqi or Afghani. That prisoner has blood all over his chest, so the viewer can infer that before they pointed at him and shot him with a rifle, they took off his shirt. The viewer could also infer that the U.S Army officers kicked and punched him. It is quite possible that he was bitten by a dog. However, the prisoner is still standing despite all the torture that he has gone through. From all the blood on his chest and the fact that his shirt that has been taken off, the viewer can see that he has been mistreated and been beaten to a mess. The image shows that torturing prisoners as part of war is immoral. The image of Blood pouring outside a man’s body or mutilation of blood is an example or another part of torture because it evokes fear. One can see that there is blood on his chest, pouring down on his stomach and onto to his pants. Some pieces of the shirt are cut-off and he probably did not take off his own shirt; it was probably forcibly taken off by the U.S Army soldiers. The blood trickling down his body indicates that damage has been done to his head, probably by being kicked on punched and beaten on the head. He has sustained physical damage, and the injuries imply to the reader that the treatment the prisoner received was brutal. What makes the torture...
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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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...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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...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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...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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...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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...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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...Student’s Name Instructor Course title Date Banality of evil In life some situations and circumstances happen that force us to be what we never imagined yet these acts are normal to them and nothing is wrong. A normal person does something that cast doubts whether that person was really in a stable mind. Cases have been reported where real parents especially the father killing the child and also murdering the mother this is an onslaught murder. Cases of homicides been reported on a daily basis in the federal bureau of police. But why does this happen? These are normal people in their normal behavior but abruptly change and their behavior create an impact that affects the lives of others forever. For others, their presence only affects others and makes their lives look more disastrous this is the life we live and we have to accept the changes that occur and influence us (Adams and Balfour) The life history of great people like Adolf Hitler who just had normal life, but later on we see a change of things suddenly. Nobody had trained to be a murder and kill the Jews in the first place. No single parents teach their kid s to kill as part of learning in the early stages of life. Thus it is evident theta these are normal people who just change because of situations they are put in or may be because of the...
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...is ‘sodden’ which creates a negative depiction. Orwell’s use of pathetic fallacy is evident as the rain symbolises sadness and tragedy. The reader is made aware of the prisoner’s unhealthy living conditions through Orwell’s wordchoice: “a sickly light, like yellow tinfoil.” The simile suggests that the light appears unnatural. The word ‘sickly’ implies the sense of illness and wrongness as ‘yellow tinfoil’ further the feeling of death, decay and unnaturalness of the prisoners being left to rot. The feelings of unnaturalness is continued throughout the essay as his point is that killing a life, whilst in full flow is unnatural and appears to strengthen Orwell’s feeling of being against capital punishment. The reader’s sympathy is aroused as the writer describes the grim conditions the prisoners are forced to live in: “the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages.” Immediately the reader’s sympathy is gained as the description of the jail cells dehumanises the prisoners. Orwell continues the mood as the ‘brown silent men’ wait for their inevitable...
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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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...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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