The Allegory of the Cave

from Plato’s Republic (380 BC)

What is an Allegory?• an extended metaphor• the underlying meaning has moral,

social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas such as charity or ignorance• a story with two meanings, a literal

meaning and a symbolic meaning

• Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before ... He pushed away the tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he’s wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. - page 3

• Hundreds of nights they’d sat up debating the pros and cons of self destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall. - page 58

• allegory of the cave - clay figures

Application to The Road• What is the cave?• Who is the prisoner chained in the cave?• Who is the prisoner who is freed?• What is the sun / light?

Settingcave-like• dark• closed-in feeling• difficult to see

CharactersFather• remains in the cave• unable to see the light / truth• focuses on the past through dreams which are a false sense of reality

Son• has knowledge of the light / truth• tries to lead the man to the light / truth• refuses to acknowledge his dreams