Summary Of Alice In Wonderland

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 12th grade September 2001

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Summary of " The Allegory of the Cave" "The Allegory of the Cave," was written by Plato somewhere between 428-327 BC. The essay takes place in a dark cave, inside the cave there are prisoners chained to the walls so that they cannot move at all, not even the movement of the head from side to side is permitted. The prisoners have been in the cave their whole lives, never once being able to see daylight or move. Located in the middle of the cave there is a fire, but there is a wall in front of the fire so that the prisoners actually see the fire it's self, just the faint light it casts. The caregivers for the prisoners walk on a wall near the fire carrying objects. The prisoners can see the people's shadows cast upon the top of the cave, but they cannot see the actual fire or the people and objects themselves.

They can however, hear the voices of the people. Because, the prisoners can only see the shadows and hear the voices, they see the shadows as being something that could move and talk on their own instead of a representation of something else.

One day a prisoner managed to escape from the cave and see the outside world. When the prisoner gets out into the world his eyes cannot handle the light of the sun and he was in extreme pain. Eventually, the pain subsided and his eyes adjusted to the light of the world and he was amazed of things that he had saw, and could not imagine them to be true. The prisoner eventually is able to accept the real world as the "truth", and was in total disbelief that his whole previous life was a lie.