The Wall of Shadows

The allegory of the cave, at the first reading is fairly straightforward. It is a documentation by Plato of his teacher Socrates’ conversation with another student Glaucon, where Socrates uses various metaphors to explain the journey of a philosopher and original thinker who dares to look at things from beyond the prescribed point of view.

The cave is an elaborate setup, which is meant to represent the visual world or society. The prisoners who are chained and sitting in a row are individuals who are conditioned by society since birth and thereby look at the world in a prescribed manner. All these prisoners in the cave are looking at shadows of puppet showmen on the wall in front of them that is cast by the fire behind them. They see neither the showmen nor the fire, just the shadows and that for them is their reality. According to Socrates the fire represents the sun or light though he does not elaborate on who the puppet showmen are. This is the scene the allegory begins with and comprises the first part. In the second part one of the prisoners is freed from his shackles so that he suddenly realizes that the wall of shadows he has considered his reality all his life is but a small part of a wider scheme of things. He is dragged up the rugged ascent to the opening of the cave and made to look out at the world beyond – the sky the sun the trees etc. This journey is violent and tough. Then after getting accustomed to this new “truer” reality he has to journey back into the cave and rejoin his companions in the third part of the allegory. He is necessarily maladjusted when he returns since he has grown unaccustomed to the darkness and the men who have stayed in the cave all the while, resolve never to go out to explore anything in the fear of coming back disoriented and less functional.

That is the gist of the allegory, and though it is fairly didactic it still raises questions that are not directly answered in the text. The most obvious one perhaps is who are these puppet showmen and who is it that frees the prisoner and drags him up to the mouth of the cave and with what motivation? I believe out of all the parts in the allegory it is the character of the prison guard that is the most intriguing since he does such obviously contradictory things. In spite of keeping the prisoners chained for so long why would he suddenly decide to free one and forcibly drag him around to show him the things that have been kept at bay so carefully? The first impression that the prisoners are shackled by institutions, the state or figures of authority, is suddenly checked when one of the prisoners is freed, since no figure of authority would willingly make the individual look beyond the straight jacket. So the mystery grows as to what has kept these men shackled. In my interpretation the prison guard is our conscious minds with all its dichotomies and contradictions. Our consciousness keeps us focused on the “wall of shadows”, on societal realities common to everyone so that we can function and progress in ways both expected and relevant. At the same time there is a part of our consciousness which strives to break the mould, rebel against the system and experience a new kind of life and perception – and this exploratory side is at constant odds with the pragmatic side. Hence the journey into “enlightenment” or differential experience is always a tough one since one has to battle with one’s “saner and safer instincts of survival”.

A question that I posed in a class discussion regarding the allegory was whether the journey to the opening of the cave could possibly be done by more than one person: together? As I understand it that journey is necessarily an individual one because it is also an inward one. It is taken in the realm of one’s mind – from one level of consciousness to another and it is necessarily tough since one has to go against all the age long social conditioning, and the comfort zone of knowing that everybody is going to agree with you or vice versa. But then having made this tough journey and experienced an obviously more beautiful and wider reality why then does the actor have to go back to the cave? The reason is precisely because it is an inward journey, and the moment he tries to share his experience with anyone – translate his widened perception into words – he must speak in the language of shadows that is understood by the rest of the prisoners facing the wall.

The first parallel that comes to mind of this situation is the relationship between spirituality and religion. The former is a realization or journey that takes place at an individual level and is not an experience that can be shared. Religion – apart from its connotations of institutionalization and power – is simply a tool of communicating spirituality to a wider audience; in effect it is mass media that can be watched on a “wall of shadows” by those who do not make the inward journey themselves. In the process the experience is naturally diluted standardized and far removed from the authentic, but it is the only way it can be understood by a group. Similarly experimenting with hallucinogens might give you a wider experience of your consciousness but how do you translate the experience to someone else. Whether it is through language music or visuals it still remains a representation of the authentic, shadows which nonetheless may be communicated and understood in a social context.