Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Plato's allegory of the cave analysis
Plato's allegory of the cave reality
Plato's allegory of the cave comparisons in essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Plato's allegory of the cave analysis
SID: 1524266
Self-Evaluation
For this project, I decided to write an essay on analyzing the philosophical content on a movie I fount interesting. The movie I choose is The Truman Show, and I want to explore how its story draws connections with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from the Republic.
For the essay, I focus on showing how the story of the movie The Truman Show bears resemblance to the story in the Allegory of the Cave, and trying to show that they are conveying some messages that have similar ideas. I divide the body paragraph of my essay based on the progression of the movie’s story, with first body paragraph talking about how Truman, the protagonist of the movie, is being trapped inside a false reality like the cave prisoners, with second body paragraph talking about how both Truman and a prisoner eventually realizes about the nature of the reality in the world they live in, and with the third paragraph talking about how Truman and the prisoner is able to seek true reality in the end.
…show more content…
I am analyzing the movie too see how it reflects the philosophical content of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In addition to just drawing parallels, the Allegory of the Cave has a focus on discussing metaphysics, so I also try to find out if the movie and the allegory is conveying messages with similar meanings that are focus on the question of what is real, and how to we know if something is real or not. The skills we learned to write a good philosophical paper is heavily utilized in this paper. For example, I need to know how to formulate a thesis that is clear, concise, and arguable, and proposes arguments based on what I mentioned inside the thesis. In addition to that, I also need to use the source materials precisely, and not just using a lot of quotations, so that there is more focus on actually analyzing the
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
In “The Allegory of the Cave”, Plato is demonstrating his belief and theory about what peoples mindset concerning old and new ideas through a metaphor. He use Aristotelian techniques to build the base and strength of his essay.
The Allegory of the Cave has many parallels with The Truman Show. Initially, Truman is trapped in his own “cave”; a film set or fictional island known as Seahaven. Truman’s journey or ascension into the real world and into knowledge is similar to that of Plato’s cave dweller. In this paper, I will discuss these similarities along with the very intent of both of these works whose purpose is for us to question our own reality.
In order to understand the moral fabric of the world, it is important to question any information that is given to an individual, instead of blindly accepting the majority opinion and giving it full credibility and validity based on other people’s opinions. Plato’s work, The Republic introduces the allegory of the cave, which is metaphorical scenario that attempts to explain the importance of questioning norms that may seem trivial. Plato illustrates a cave where bounded prisoners have lived all their lives in seclusion, away from the outside world. In their immobile state, they can only look at the wall in front of them which is illuminated by a small fire that has been going on behind them. The wall constantly projects shadows of people passing by outside the cave going about their daily lives. The prisoners have never seen anything else, and they have never experienced the outside world, so they are content in what they have. Plato then, poses a problem of one prisoner escaping, and he analyzes and hypothesises what the initial reaction of the escaped man would be. The first thing the prisoner would experience would be blindness, ironically from the overwhelming exposure to light as he steps out from the cave. Soon, he will begin to realize his ignorance as he sees that the shadows he had seen all his life were actually real people. Plato concludes that his idea of the perfect life inside the cave was ill conceived and that the prisoner would have never been aware of the world outside, had he not escaped. Similarly, The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, follows the life of a man in the utopian town of Seahaven. What the protagonist isn’t aware of however is that his entire life has been broadcasted throughout the world; as a...
The Truman Show closely parallels Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Initially, Truman is trapped in his own 'cave'; a film set or fictional island known as Seahaven. Truman?s journey or ascension into the real world and into knowledge is similar to that of Plato?s cave dweller.
Plato was a distinguished man known for its highly intellectual theory concerning human’s perception. This particular reading emphasizes the point that what we recognize as real from birth is completely misleading based on our tainted understanding of reality, and that what we see and hear don’t necessarily ensure the truth and the actual knowledge. Even though Plato’s “Allegory of Cave” was written a long time ago, we can still relate it with the society today. For instance, we, the people, are the prisoners, and the shadow, is none other than the television and media, whose role has made such a huge impact in how we perceive things in life. The modern day television relates to the thought provoking, excellent, and captivating theory of Plato in its controlled audience, the misleading reality, and the enslaved addiction.
In this world we are born and raised into a certain understanding that things are a certain way. We are taught to believe that the way you do things are the way they should be done and that is the way they have always been done in the past because that is the right way to do these things. On the other hand, the way we view our world, our situation, or our current lives in our own personal circles may not be exactly what we have thought they were. Reading and watching “The Myth of the Cave” by Plato and “The Truman Show” respectively I will discuss the comparisons of similarities and differences, the significance of Truman’s name, which path would I choose if I was put in this position, and if these two stories were illustrated in Socratic virtue ethics how would
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
Freedom in mind, freedom in nature, and freedom in subjectivity of individual are three kinds of freedoms. However, freedom should be expressed within the limits of reason and morality. Having freedom equals having the power to think, to speak, and to act without externally imposed restrains. As a matter of fact, finding freedom in order to live free is the common idea in Plato with "The Allegory of the Cave"; Henry David Thoreau with " Where I lived and What I lived for"; and Jean Paul Sartre with " Existentialism". Generally, Plato, Thoreau, and Sartre suggested that human life should be free. They differ in what that freedom is. Plato thinks it is found in the world of intellect, Thoreau thinks freedom is found in nature, and Sartre thinks freedom is found in subjectivity of individual.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the pinnacle of philosophy, many future philosophers based their own philosophies from Plato’s Allegory. A simple Allegory questioning truth and reality has also shaped current pop culture. The past shapes the future, it is surreal knowing how a single man from the past with his love for wisdom influenced modern films. The Allegory is a simple story that makes people question their truth and their morals in which they live by. The Allegory tells a story of a prisoner who has escaped the “fake” reality and has seen “truth”; the informed prisoner attempts to return to his fake world to enlighten other prisoners of their ignorance. This same plot concept can be seen in the movie The Truman Show.
From John Wayne and the western motif to William Shatner and the science fiction motif, Hollywood has been obsessed with the notion of frontier, taking this notion from an American ideology that encourages men to forge ahead into the unknown. Often, though, it seems these men are more running away from society than really running to the unknown. And in The Truman Show, that is what Truman is truly doing- running to the unknown in order to escape the responsibilities of his current life. Thus The Truman Show, which looks to be a hip postmodern film about subjectivity, is actually a modernist film tying into the frontier metanarrative in which society represents a binding world, and the frontier embodies the male escapist fantasy of no responsibility.
On the surface, it appears that Peter Weir has simply based a film around a fascinating concept. Beneath the surface, however, The Truman Show provides an intriguing commentary on our modern society and sends a far deeper message to the audience. It forces one to question our obsession with fame, money, media and entertainment as well as control and what shapes the human identity.
Do we really understand the world we live in and see everyday? Is our everyday perception of reality a misinterpretation, which somehow we can’t break free from? A famous Greek philosopher by the name of Plato sought out to explain this in an experiment he called the Cave Allegory. I will discuss what the Cave Allegory is as well as talk about the movie Interstellar, which is a great example of Plato’s Cave Allegory and how it relates to Plato’s ideas. The question we have to answer first is, what is Plato’s Cave Allegory?
Like the people in the cave, Truman had never experienced what the world was really like. He only knew shadows, represented by actors in the film, that formed his conception of reality. However, unlike the cavemen in the allegory, Truman was alone and he walked out the ‘cave’ after he realized the figures and the events were an illusion, whereas in the allegory a single caveman out of a few left and had the realization in the real world. This seems more likely and connects better logically because the caveman had something to compare his experience of the real world, which allows him to naturally adjust and form a conclusion.
Comparing The Allegory of the Cave by Plato and The Truman Show, some similarities can be witnessed