Plato’s Symbols
Your essay should relate specific examples to the main symbols from Plato’s allegory. You can organize your body paragraphs to follow the sequence of Plato’s symbols, with two or more symbols per paragraph.
CAVE: Describe your environment related to your topic—Where is it? When? How large or small? How much time is spent in the location? Who are your fellow cave dwellers?
BONDS: What are the restrictions that tied you to your cave? These could be dependence on your parents or teachers or fears, ignorance, self-doubt, or overconfidence. Explain.
PEOPLE with GEAR: Who or what influences your perceptions, preconceptions, goals/aspirations related to your topic? Identify the specific people, forms of media, etc. How do these things influence you? Explain.
SHADOWS: What are your actual perceptions, preconceptions, or goal/aspirations related to your topic? What are some positive and negative beliefs? How deeply rooted are your beliefs? Explain.
PRISONERS’ HONOR: What sort of honors or rewards are conferred by your fellow cave dwellers? Which ones are trivial? Which ones are very important? Explain.
GUIDE/TEACHER: Who freed you from your bonds? (a friend, teacher, coach, team mate, co-worker, boss, or your peer group, or other). How did he or she do this?
ASCENT to the SURFACE: Explain your transition or journey from being inside the cave to living in the upper world. Why did you leave your cave? Was the transition easy or hard? Is the transition complete, or are you still undergoing the transition? Explain.
SUNLIGHT/UPPER WORLD: What important lessons or “truths” did you learn from your transition or journey from the cave to the upper world? Did any of your previous perceptions, preconceptions, or goal/aspirations in the cave turn out to be true in reality? Or were they all false illusions. Explain.
RETURN to the CAVE: How you would inform or teach other “cave dwellers” of your past experience? What advice would you give? Would they listen?
A complete draft of the essay is required for peer review in class. Submit your finished essay as a Word document in this Canvas assignment page.
Work Cited
Plato. “The Allegory of the Cave.” The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, Vintage Classics, 1991.
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