Allegory of the Cave

What is the meaning of the Allegory of the Cave? There is much more to the Allegory of the Cave than just an old caveman story. The main ideas of the Allegory of the Cave are, ignorance to change and gaining a new perspective on life. These ideas both come together at the end of the story and really start to bite someone on the back.

Ignorance to change is represented by the prisoners. What I find fascinating is that some prisoners like sitting in a dark cave and like to be shackled down to the floor. Now to me this sounds like they’re being tortured down their. What I came to realize though is that this is all they know of life. They don’t know what is out their. They have no clue what anything looks like except for a dark meaningless figure that is shown as a shadow. The prisoners are ignorant towards the out side world. In Fahrenheit 451, Mildred reminds me as one of those prisoners in the dark. She does what she is told and does not question anything. For example she enjoys sitting in her 4 screened room just watching tv the whole entire day. To me this is the same amount of torture that the prisoners are going through.

In Fahrenheit 451 Montag says “Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They might just stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!”. What does Montag mean by this? Well as we know already, the cave and the prisoners represent the ignorant. We also know that the outside world is a new “dangerous” concept to the prisoners much like the books to the people of Fahrenheit 451. Montag is trying to explain that books can give us knowledge and wisdom to better not only ourselves but the whole world.

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