Allegory of the Cave

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Allegory of the Cave
Plato’s theory of forms is that we live in a lesser and imperfect world and that whatever we perceive is not true because of distortions. According to Plato, true forms only exist in the perfect universe. Plato’s allegory is a picture of chained prisoners forced to look at a wall where shadows of real objects fall in a cave. The prisoners grow believing the shadows to be true objects. When one of the prisoners is cut free and allowed to see the outside world, he is shocked to realize he has been observing parts of reality. When the prisoner returns to the cave and reports all the beautiful things he had seen, the other prisoners kill him misbelieving that the prisoner had ill motives to corrupt them.
In The Giver, Utopia is a futuristic society where rules are set and followed so as to keep things in order. This society has eliminated all pain, hatred and prejudice; this is so to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated (Plato 9). A Utopian society implies a perfect world where people strive for sameness. Jonas is selected to be the new receiver of memories.
To compare the allegory of the cave and the Giver, the giver would be the intellect who has seen the light while the rest of society is still in the dark. The intellect thus makes decisions on behalf of the community, and he cannot share his wisdom until the receiver is chosen. The freed prisoner who realizes new reality represents the receiver in this case (Plato 9). The receiver has to go back to the rest of society to help enlighten them, but this journey is fraught with dangers.

The main difference between the Giver and the allegory of the cave is that in the allegory of the cave, the enlightened have a responsibility to share with others the truth while the Giver’s responsibility is to keep the truth from the people. This applies in the contemporary world where government actions should be public, but others are kept secret in the name of national security.
One could, therefore, argue that both Plato’s allegory of the cave and the Giver has contemporary relevance as it touches some of the issues in the modern world such as oppression by government and other actors such as large multinational companies. In the allegory of the cave it is described that prisoners were chained by the legs and neck so they cannot move nor go against the puppeteers, thus physical restraint but In the Giver, people are restrained mentally (Plato 8). In both, people are controlled in the different range of ways but which ultimately result in oppression.
We can also perceive both Plato’s allegory of the cave and the Giver to the modern society in relation to how new knowledge is dealt with. In both Plato’s allegory of the cave and the Giver, it is clear that people in some societies know what they are shown while others only know what the government tells them and in both occasions, they are prevented from the truth. This applies to the contemporary world in the clamour for the disclosure from governments.
Further, Plato’s allegory of the cave reflects the condition of ignorance in people who by their limitation fail to rise from the conditions while in the Giver, lives of people are dictated with the effect that people lack freedom of choice.
Works Cited
PLATO. ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE. [S.l.]: LULU COM, 2017. Print.