Plato's "Allegory"

The other day in class, Dr. Sexson showed us a diagram of Plato's "Allegory of The Cave" which he thought was less than satisfactory. As the resident artist of the class, I've redrawn it. Now, I sketched this out very quickly, so go easy on me. =)

The prisoners of the cave are chained to the wall. They can only see the projection of the puppeteers behind them and therefore believe this projection is real. One prisoner, having escaped his chains, makes his way up to another world to witness the true sun with delight and amazement.



The allegory forces us to question the nature of our existence and of illusion. What we know to be real may in fact be the product of another's imagination. "Little do we know," there may be puppeteers or even a narrative voice behind even the most mundane things we do....we simply haven't heard it yet.