Socrates Blog #1: Allegory of the Cave

Hello everyone. This is Socrates here and this is my first official blog. I am going to try to make this short and sweet, partly because I already touched on this subject in last weeks podcast and partly because I do not want to take up your whole lunch break. So let’s get to it!

The Allegory of the Cave

Okay, so first things first, one would need sufficient background on the allegory of the cave in order to fully understand how it relates to the Heroes plotline. So here is a general excerpt from Wikipedia.org’s page on the story:

Imagine several prisoners who have been chained up in a cave for all of their lives. They have never been outside the cave. They face a wall in the cave and they can never look at the entrance of the cave. Sometimes animals, birds, people, or other objects pass by the entrance of the cave casting a shadow on the wall inside the cave. The prisoners see the shadows on the wall and mistakenly view the shadows as reality.

However, one man is released from his chains and runs out of the cave. For the first time, he sees the real world and now knows that it is far beyond the shadows he had been seeing. He sees real birds and animals, not just shadows of birds and animals. This man is excited about what he sees and he goes back to his fellow prisoners in the cave to tell them about the real world. But to his astonishment, they don’t believe him. In fact, they are angry with him. They say the shadows are reality and that the escaped prisoner is crazy for saying otherwise. According to Plato, the world outside the cave represents the world of forms while the shadows on the wall represent objects in the physical world. The escape of the prisoner represents philosophical enlightenment and the realization that forms are the true reality. Most people are like the prisoners in the cave. They think the shadows are reality. Philosophers, though, are like the man who escapes the cave and sees the real world. They have true knowledge.

The most obvious example of the allegory of the cave shown in Heroes would definitely be the storyline involving Peter Petrelli. Peter has essentially lost his identity and has no real idea of the person he used to be. In this sense, Peter is like the prisoners chained in the cave. He only knows of what he can see. He only knows his self in its current state. The real question at hand that Peter has to confront and resolve is whether or not to open the box that supposedly holds his true identity. Peter now has a tough decision to make: be content with his current self and act as the prisoner or open the box, rediscover his true identity and break free from the chains to see reality in forms and not shadows. Everyone is entitled to choose what they feel most comfortable with. I know what I would choose; what would you?

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
~Aesop