“The Allegory of the Cave” and The Truman Show
While I was watching The Truman Show movie, the reflections of the past readings came to my mind. A poor child, who was a product of undesired pregnancy and was taken for an ambitious TV producer in order to create a perfect environment, life and world for a human being, Truman’s life wasn’t more than a reality show, so everyone outside in the real world could enjoy his life step by step without his knowledge since he was the only real one in it. Truman grew up in a manipulated world surrounded by obliviousness, lies of media, and hype perhaps as everyone of us.
The scenario where Socrates sets up in “The Allegory of the Cave”, written by Plato, he describes to Glaucon, his student, a situation on where human beings are prisoners since they were born and all that they know about life are the shadows that are reflected on a wall in front of them because a blazing fire is behind them and between these two a long way with people crossing and talking producing echoes. Then one day one of the prisoners is set free, and in his way out he cannot distinguish well until his eyes get used to the light and he becomes amazed for what is outside in the real world. Similarity, Truman was like a prisoner since his first time alive inside this TV set living in ignorance like in a cave, seeing shadows who were the people around him talking things that sounded like echoes, words that nobody understand. However, that was his world until he wanted to be free, yet he couldn’t distinguish well at the beginning because people around him, the actors and actresses didn’t let him to see. Moreover the TV producer Chistof did everything in order to keep him inside as the chains of a prisoner would do, but Truman found his way out of his cave called “Seaheaven.” Obliviousness doesn’t only happen in movies or literature work, but it also happens in real world. For instance, I know many people who came from my country to the US as they were trying to escape from a cave. They cave was their town surrounded by poverty due to corrupted government, but it was every that they have known since they were born. All that they knew is that they had to grow up, work, and get married, but they didn’t think about their education and the lack of it, were the chains that kept them in the cave of ignorance until they decided to come here, and set themselves free from the shadows of corruption and poverty. Mostly of them are trying to get “enlightened” as Socrates says, but others have just changed to a different cave.
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