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Essay / Allegory of the Cave, Meditations of Descartes and The Truman Show
In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato asks us to consider that the world we live in is the equivalent of a cave; To be able to enter this “sensitive realm” of truth and knowledge, we must actively pursue these values. In his First Meditation, René Descartes asks us to abandon all pre-existing assumptions about the universe, because it is possible that we are deceived. It is difficult to imagine that there is any legitimacy to any of these scenarios set out by philosophers, because we are so absorbed in the intricacies of our own lives that it rarely occurs to us in mind if there is any authenticity in what we are experiencing. However, the 1998 film The Truman Show brings a very plausible reality to these propositions. The Truman Show brings to life the notions of skepticism – the belief that the way you think about things doesn't correspond to reality – discussed by Plato and Descartes. Recalling the allegory of the cave, The Truman Show presents a world where man lives in a false reality. This correlates with the idea of man's ignorance and flight, which Plato speaks of. Likewise, The Truman Show bears similarities to First Meditations in its exploration of a man's transition from confidence to doubt in the world presented to him. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Plato's Allegory of the Cave describes a set of circumstances in which humans have been trapped in a cave their entire lives, with their only connection to the real world being the shadows cast on the wall to which they face a fire burning behind them. Because they have been stuck in this position their whole life, this is how they perceive their world. Truman Burbank, the main character of The Truman Show, lives very similar to the inhabitants of the cave. The enormous television set on which he lives echoes the pseudo-reality that the cave offered the prisoners in Plato's allegory. The actors hired to interact with Truman are like the fire that cast shadows for the people in the cave, as both gave the illusion of true reality. However, like the prisoners, Truman spent most of his life unaware that anything was wrong with the world presented to him. Truman believes “that truth is nothing but shadows” (Republic VII p.1133). At this point, Truman is not skeptical, because he takes his false world literally and believes it to be reality. The key aspect of The Allegory of the Cave is that the prisoner is finally released from his chains and allowed to finally perceive the sentient realm. Truman's quest to seek the truth about his existence represents his own liberation from the chains placed on him by Christof and everyone else involved in the production of the television show about Truman's life. Plato writes that reality in the past can often be difficult to accept for someone who has lived in a state of ignorance all their life. He relates this to coming out of a dark cave and having to adjust your eyes once you come out into the sunlight. The light is intimidating, but it is worth following, because once we immerse ourselves in it, we cannot imagine returning to the dark state we once were in. This applies to Truman, who overcomes his fear of water to make his way toward a reality of which he had previously only seen vestiges. It was a risk, but in the end we see that it was still a risk worth taking. Once Truman hits the wall – the boundary between the cave and the.