Compare And Contrast Plato's Cave And The Truman Show

The Truman Show and Plato’s Cave

Since the beginning of time, human nature has been directed towards love relationships and friendships. Through these relationships and friendships we act in love towards each other to enlighten one another in truth and in happiness. This is because the absences of truth is misery and the fullness of truth is ecstasy. This is seen in both “The Truman Show” and “Plato’s Republic”.

In “Plato’s Republic” he tells a story of a cave with people being shackled and kept in the shadows. These people can only see shadows of objects on the cave wall and believe that this is reality. Plato writes as Socrates and says, “Imagine human beings as if they were in a cave-like dwelling underground, with a broad opening to the daylight across the whole width of the cave. They have been there since childhood, chained not just by their legs but by their necks, so that they can’t move and can only look ahead of them…Light reaches them from a fire that burns way above and behind them…there is a path across the cave, beside which you need to imagine a little wall, built like those screens puppeteers have in front of their audience so they can show their puppets above them.” (Republic, 239-240). This is illustrating the lie that is being pandered to the people and that this lie then puts the people into bondage. These lies that we live makes us absolutely miserable, but because this is what we have accepted as true since childhood we do not question what is familiar to us. The people in the cave cannot move at all and must just look at the

wall of shadows and believe that what they see is reality. In a turn of fate one of the strong is released, dragged out of the cave kicking and screaming, and brought into the light, which is the truth. Plato continues his story that he attributes to Socrates by saying, ”one of them was set free, and was suddenly forced to stand up, twist his neck around, then try to walk, and look towards the source of light. Giving that he would be in pain while doing all this, and unable because of the glare to see the actual things that cast the shadows he used to see…and suppose what he used to see to be truer then the things now being pointed out to him.” (Republic, 240-241). This illustrates the disbelief that one goes through when suddenly confronted with the fact that the life that was being lived was a total lie and forcefully shoved into the truth of reality. Then finally, the freed men will return to the cave after experiencing and learning all about truth. Plato goes on, “So down each of you must go in your turn, to share the living space and become accustomed like them to observe things in the dark, because as you become used to it, having yourself seen the truth about beautiful and just and good things you’ll see a thousand times better than they do what each kind of shadowy image is.” (Republic, 247). So the question that needs to be asked is why return to the cave after being enlightened with the truth and knowing that the cave is a lie? The answer is simple, it is love and friendship. You have been in the cave for the majority of your entire life and made extreme bonds with these other people in the cave, they are your friends. You return to the cave to enlighten them of the truth and to bring them into the light with you. You love these people, want the best for them, and want them to ultimately be happy.
We also see a reflection of this in “The Truman Show”. In the movie Truman Burbank was adopted at birth by a network and raised in a studio that was setup to look and feel like an island town where everything was controlled and televised for entertainment. Now Truman is the only one that thinks his life, his environment, and every aspect of his world is real. As Truman starts noticing inconsistencies in his day-to-day life, he starts suspecting that things in his environment are not as they appear to be. He sees his dead Father, he changes his routine and sees people out of place, and sees a backroom inside a fake wall in an elevator. Truman also has a radio glitch in his car and gets a turn by turn play of his morning drive as he is driving the route. As all these observations are piling up Truman remembers a conversation he had with his love interest from college named Sylvia, in which she tried to tell him everything was fake and was stifled and exiled by the show’s production crew. Truman is an explorer at heart and wants to travel and this has been a dream of his since the beginning of the movie; his whole reason to travel is to find Sylvia whom he still loves. Truman is able to escape during a night without the cameras seeing him and sails off, on what he thinks is the ocean, until he reaches the wall of the studio which the boat crashes against, and finds an exit door from the studio. The whole time the network was manipulating him and when they saw he was going to escape they tried to kill him. We see the studio is the cave, everything in Truman’s life are the shadows on the wall and Sylvia is the one that returned to the cave to enlighten Truman of the truth. Christof, the director, tries to justify himself to Truman before he leaves the studio by saying, “Truman, I've watched you your whole life. I saw you take your first step, your first word, your first kiss. I know you better than you know yourself. You're not going to walk out that door…Truman, there's no more truth out there than in the world I created for you - the same lies and deceit. But in my world you have nothing to fear.” (TTS, Screenplay, End). This shows the development of the cave environment in which Truman was shackled in this lie with no truth, no real love, and no real friends.
We now can conclude that love and friendship are the reasons we want the best for others.

We form bonds and friendship that allows us to will the best for the ones we love. We saw this both in the enlightened freed man that returns to the cave to also enlighten and free his friends in the “Republic.” We saw it again in the love Sylvia had for Truman to bring him the truth and help him get out of his

cave.