![]() The reader is then asked to consider "what being released from their bonds and cured of their ignorance would naturally be like if something like this came to pass" (VII:515c). Plato follows this association with a series of suppositions, invoking Glaucon to conceptualize and legitimate the vision of the cave as Plato ventures deeper into the metaphor. Glaucon replies to this scene with, "It's a strange image you're describing, and strange prisoners," providing the viewpoint of the reader within the allegory, drawing it once again back to the actual as did the command of "imagine" at the beginning of the metaphor (VII:515).Īfter the monologue of the set up, the passage returns to the traditional exchange of the dialogue, with the startling statement of "they're like us," drawing the reader into the world of the allegory even more deeply - the association between the actual and the allegorical now begins to take form as the dialogue progresses, its structure mimicking the actual mental processes of the function of comprehension (VII:515). This idea of imprisonment becomes significant as the metaphor continues and the fusion of the figurative with the concrete beings to render itself within the text. These humans have "been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered," thus indicating that they have developed fully within the cave, and know nothing but the small plane of vision, shadows reflected upon the cave, offered to them within their shackles (VII:514). ![]() The "underground, cavelike dwelling," inspires connotations of darkness and suppression within the imagination of the reader, and the detailed spatial layout and human inhabitation only serve to heighten the sense of figurative tension (VII:514). ![]() The passage works within a pattern of ideological introductions followed by figurative illustrations, an interplay that creates a series of linked revelations that formulate a complete world of allegorical context. Thus the allegory is not only a self-contained vision of "the effects of education on our nature," but a prolonged metaphor whose figurative language both intrinsically and superficially draws upon the greater themes at play within the work as a whole (VII:514).Īfter Plato's beginning introduction of the passage as a metaphor, the author goes on togeographically set up the scene for the reader, choosing images that directly reflect their symbolic purpose. This experience also clarifies for the reader the role of the philosopher king and the notion of the kallipolis a construct based around this vision of truth and wisdom with its multifaceted synthesis of many topos within the dialogue. As the passage goes through its multiple spatial and metaphysical levels of creation, the reader experiences the exact procession of which he is reading about in the work, thus creating a replication of the same education that Plato addresses within The Republic as a whole. ![]() He also emphasizes that the reader must "imagine," a command that reinforces the allegorical nature of the work - the reader enters into the text as both a voyeur and an actual conceptualist of the image being imagined (VII: 514). Plato introduces his famous allegory of the cave with the phrase, "like this:" thus establishing that the passage is structured as a metaphor, and therefore must be read both as a figurative description and a symbolic representation of a concrete state of being (VII:514).
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