Camp 14 Isolation

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

a “closely regulated chamber in which guards assert absolute control over prisoners.” In Allegory of the Cave the prisoners are chained “with their legs and necks in bond so that they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond to turn their head all the way around.” Since their childhood their necks and legs are positioned to look straight at the wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is a fire and between the fire and the prisoner is a “low wall built along it, like the screens which conjurors put up in front of their audience, and above which they exhibit their wonders.” People would pass by these walls carrying statues and all sorts of materials while talking would create a shadow. The sounds and talks of the people the prisoners connected them to the shadows. When their environment changed, they had difficulty adapting because the trauma haunted them and their prior knowledge made it difficult to accept what they see or are being told is the truth.
The environments were controlled by limiting access to knowledge that was common to the outside world and limiting their options.

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

environment, he still had nightmares of his mother and of the things he saw or did to survive. Shin had difficulty accepting or seeing eye to eye with others as he only had knowledge of what was taught to him. In Allegory of the Cave the prisoners doubted what is real since they perceive shadows as an actual person that created sounds and not someone doing puppeteer by the fire.
In conclusion, both Shin and the prisoners have difficulty leaving behind this way of life and thinking because they have not experienced any other. Shin lived in a structured environment that was full of lies and inhumane conditions. His upbringing forced him to adapt and adjust to the camp’s rules.People that he met along the way such as Uncle and Park were able to make Shin aware and educate him on the outside world but it was not sufficient. In Allegory of the Cave the prisoners were unable to break free from the made up reality they knew, but had difficulty accepting something different because they had no other exposure but the shadows cast inside the cave. They do not have the capacity to associate the shadows with something from the outside they cannot see. It is difficult to accept something as a norm and truthful when it is different from the knowledge you are familiar with.