Camp 14 Isolation

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Recommended: Psychological effects on human behaviour in prison

The author of Escape from Camp 14 and the Allegory of the Cave are trying to show how isolation and manipulation of the individual’s environment can affect their mental and physical state. Imprisonment can cause an individual to perceive and respond differently from the norm when trying to survive and to learn how to succeed in their environment. Their confinement and fear of the unknown have caused them to become afraid and given control to their manipulator. Unfortunately,these individuals have been in their control environments since birth so are not able to see or have knowledge of anything else besides what they are taught. For instance, in Camp 14 the government has placed rules to control the prisoners within its walls by implementing …show more content…

They were brainwashed not to question what they see and manipulated them by depriving them of food, abusing them psychologically and physically. Shin states that “he had been trained by guards and teachers to believe that every time he was beaten, he deserved it.” The camp forced Shin to adjust to its ways of living and never to question it. “As a matter of instinct, Shin was reluctant to ask for anything. The teachers in the labour camp would punish children who asked questions. His environment discouraged him from perceiving positive things as fair and normal. Individuals like Shin do not trust authority figures instead would question in their mind and become paranoid about what their true intentions are. The change of structure and prior abuse affected how he saw others including himself. In Allegory of the Cave they would doubt what they saw when removed from the dark cave as they were accustomed and believed that the shadows projected on the wall were real. Plato assumes that if the prisoner’s known environment is removed they would feel guilty, lost and unable to free themselves from their chains just as Shin’s trauma continue to haunt him. “His nightmares would not go away.He found his comfortable, well-nourished life impossible to reconcile with the grisly images from Camp 14 that played inside his head.” Although he was no longer in this

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