Reality Check

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Recommended: Allegory of the cave comparison to real life

Is the life we live day to day real, or are we stuck in a world where we are told what to do but don’t really know? Or can we actually function ourselves? As puppeteers create images on a cave wall in the short story, “The Allegory of the Cave”, prisoners solely believe that is the real world; little do they know there is much more to life than being chained in one spot to stare at shadows for life. The Matrix, produced by Joel Silvers, goes along the same aspects as the short story of whether the world they are living in day by day is real as they follow a computer simulated game. While the two entertaining pieces portray multiple similarities such as a world being pulled over your eyes or being controlled by other, each has distinct differences of what is actually true to this so-called world.
“The Allegory of the Cave” confronts a view of modern constraints from people’s everyday lives. Plato describes how all the prisoners are chained by the legs and head forced to stare at the cave wall where they watch casting shadows and hear noises in which they believe “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images” (Plato p2). The shackles can portray limitations coming from today’s daily life. There are so many regulations and rules that we are given through the government that we really cannot control our own lives. The majority of the human race seems to believe that the government always makes the best decisions for the country. Other limitations from the shackles include money troubles, sicknesses, and the lack of food for the family. Another quality exposed is the sunlight representing the truth. As a prisoner “turns his neck around and walks and looks towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the gla...

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...ve; however, they do not believe there is another world out there and do nothing but disregard the man who attempts to tell them the real truth. Two different pieces of work closely relate as they have many comparisons of whether the world we live in is true or not.
As we look back upon “The Allegory of the Cave” and the Matrix, the scripts share a wide variety of comparisons which the people believe our everyday lives are not controlled. On the opposite spectrum, one piece illustrates humans being trapped in a cave to believe all the shadows they saw were real; the other is a futuristic computer game controlling their lives. Either way, imagine living in a world where you are generated through computer not knowing that there is more out there than control. What if you were stuck in a place since birth and not able to make any decisions for yourself until death?

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