Compare And Contrast The Truman Show And The Allegory Of The Cave

Kristen Jakupak Epistemology Philosophy Paper October 5, 2015 Within Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave, and Descartes Meditation I, there are multiple similarities and differences in them. Reality is questionable within both of these stories. There is skepticism in them on whether they are truly living, and if it is real, or if it is controlled by something else entirely. In both stories, they also wanted to leave what they understood to be reality, to find what they thought and sensed to be the true reality.

In the Allegory of the Cave, there is a group of prisoners chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. One prisoner is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all. Although the prisoners were experiencing something different than what was happening outside the cave, they were still in the same reality as the people outside the cave. In the Man Who Lived Underground, Fred Daniels, a young black man unjustly accused of murdering a woman, is forced into signing a confession.

“The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato is about a group of prisoners that were chained up in a cave with their backs facing the exit of the cave, unable to see what was going on in the outside world. They occasionally would see shadows on the wall and would

In Plato’s allegory of the cave he enplanes the effect of society. In the allegory there are people chained in a cave. All they know are the shadows that they see. The shadows are being made by the shadow master who is in front of a fire. So if the shadow master shows them a shadow of a toy dragon then the people in the cave will believe that dragons are real because they saw the shadow.

In both stories, there are more than one realities, there can even be infinite realities. Both relate to the divided line theory and the theory of forms. The Truman Show and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both raise many questions relating to the basis of human existence. Reality is much more than just the visible world in both stories. They are both symbols for contrasts between ideas and what humans see as

There is a lot of talk about illusion versus reality. Many people believe that we are all living in some sort of dream and that this is all an illusion and that we are not in a reality. In the two works Plato’s Allegory of the Cave by Jeff Stickney, and the movie The Truman Show, 1999, directed by Peter Weir, both show the same concept of illusion versus reality through similarities and differences through the setting, the plot, and the display of characters. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave by Jeff Stickney and The Truman Show by Peter Weir, a huge point of comparison which shows the differences in both works is the setting.

Every individual spends their entire life trying to understand what reality is; however, because reality consist of two forms- perceived reality and actual reality, it is essential that you understand both in order to truly comprehend reality. Perceived reality is one’s perception of reality based on personal experiences and surroundings. Actual reality is actual and definite or the factual aspect of reality. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” Dick Gregory’s “Shame” and Frederick Douglass’ “Learning to Read and Write” illustrate examples of reality being composed of two different perceptions and how the ability to comprehend both is necessary in order to conceptualize

Allegory of the Cave, a short story by renowned philosopher Plato, describes the life of prisoners chained inside of a cave where all the knowledge they receive is given by unknown strangers behind them. It continues to elaborate on their transition from a lackluster world where they were truly in the dark to one that completely surpasses all expectations. Likewise, Stranger Than Fiction, a movie written by Zach Helm, illustrates an IRS auditor, Harold Crick, that is shackled by his mundane lifestyle and also has an embodied voice that seems to be controlling his life. The movie goes on to describe his arduous journey toward finding the woman behind the voice, which ultimately gives him a new perspective on life. Zach Helm’s screenplay Stranger Than Fiction and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both describe the experience of a person escaping limited perspective darkness and discovering a more complex world than they had previously thought existed.

The struggle a someone can go through to test if they have control over their life, or to find out if their destiny has been decided can be shown throughout literature and film. In The Truman Show existentialism plays a big role into how this program is created. The Production of this film is simulated by tiny cameras placed secretly around a small town inside a dome. These cameras are used to follow around a man named Truman Burbank, and record his life. Essentially creating a popular T.V. show that is on 24/7.

Plato tells us that the prisoners are confused on their emergence from the cave and that the prisoners’ will be blinded once they had been freed from the cave. After a period of time they will adjust their eyesight and begin to understand the true reality that the world poses. The stubbornness to develop a different perspective is seen in much of today’s society. The allegory of the cave is an understanding of what the true world is and how many people never see it because of their views of the society they are raised in.

Sociological imagination can be defined as one’s awareness of the impact that society has on their personal life because of the outside conditions and circumstances. The outside world create standards for people, even if they do not know that they are being looked at in this way. Therefore, society influences a person’s behavior and limits their free will. This theory is clearly demonstrated in The Truman Show. The movie helps to deepen my understanding of sociological imagination and helps me to see how the outside world controls my life.

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave the people think that their entire reality is the shadows that they see on the walls of the cave. Plato explores the truth and criticizes that humanity does not question what is real. Plato explores that the human understanding and accepting of what is real is difficult and

The Truman show is a movie that’s plot is based off the republic by Plato, written in 360 B.C.E. The Truman show is about a man who’s lived his entire life in a fictional town that is actually a TV show set. He does not know that his life is a TV show but he starts to learn the truth throughout the movie. Although Peter Weir reuses the idea of a cave were stuck in and that the truth is hard to realize from Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, the transformation of the truth being much more than what we perceive and getting yourself out of your cave ultimately leads to a deeper truth that is as philosophically compelling. As Plato writes, “Human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood” meaning that literally, people are trapped in a cave. This is directly used the Truman show, as the TV show set is the cave that Truman in chained in.

The first concept both share is the philosophy that humans accept the reality that is presented to them. In Plato’s allegory, three prisoners are chained and unable to see behind themselves. With a fire roaring in the cave, the prisoners see only the shadows of those passing by. The story then explains that if a prisoner were to escape, he would be unable to see because the sun would be too bright outside the cave.

Socrates’s allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic Book VII is an accurate depiction of how people can be blinded by what they are only allowed to see. The allegory does have relevance to our modern world. In fact, all of us as a species are still in the “cave” no matter how intelligent or enlightened we think we have become. In Plato’s Republic Book VII, Socrates depicts the scenario in a cave where there are prisoners who are fixed only being able to look at the shadows on the wall which are projections of things passing between them and the light source.