Allegory of the cave-Danielle Inducci

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato imagines people imprisoned in a cave for most of their lives. These prisoners have no sense of reality. While in this cave shadows appear on the wall of objects and people passing by. Being trapped in this cave with no knowledge of the truth of the world, minds wonder and create illusions of what these things really are. The images and shadows projected onto the blank wall is all these prisoners have that connects them to the outside world. If a prisoner were to escape and find actuality, the transition would be difficult.
The cave can symbolize how we are sheltered from the world by society into believing in a false reality. We go through life believing what we see to be true, but it is merely shadows of the truth. The shadows are what we are told to be true. The sun is what we must venture out to explore. The sun is our explanation of what is really out there. The notion of a living blindly in false sense of reality is something many people will not realize. Therefore we must try and break away from society, our cultures and anything that holds us back from the truth.