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Plato’s Cave: Still Current in Mass Media
In the “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato describes a group of stupefied people who
have been trapped in a cave their entire lives. These prisoners are chained facing a wall;
they cannot see anything except the shadows on that wall, which are being cast by men
carrying unknown objects in front of a glowing fire. They never see the actual carriers or
items, and they hear nothing but the echoes of these obscure men, yet are still entranced
by these illogical sounds and images. Plato’s Cave illustrates how people solely base their
perception of the world on their experiences of physical objects, and by doing so, they
limit themselves to the confined notions prescribed by their fear of change. The purpose
of this essay is to prove how and why the stubborn ignorance present in Plato’s Allegory
of the Cave can still be found in many aspects of today’s mass media, including
