Plato's Cave

Check this website, an animation of Plato's Cave.

Hello everyone,

I guess you enjoyed the webside I gave you last time, but here I'm going to
explain Plato's theory again illustrating with an example from Armah's The
Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, to make you better understand it.

Plato's Cave is the theory of the Greek Philosopher Plato, in his theory he states that
what the men inside the cave can see is only their shadows projected on the wall, that is to say, only illusions or shadows and nothing is real. The problem for Plato, and for us is that the men are not aware of that, because they are not able to turn back (they are bound to their chairs) and see that there is a source of light which is the reason why they see their shapes on the wall. Imagine you are one of them, and you succeed to free yourself, of course you'll know that what you were looking at is only a shadow, you're conscious now that you were deceived for a long period of time. If I were you I'll tell the others, but my God, you have to watch out, they may not believe you…and you know what will happen ( They'll see you as an alien).


The same is in The Beautiful One Are Not Yet Born. Armah uses Plato's theory to explain the attitude of the people who are enslaved but they don't revolt. The Ghanaians are not conscious, they can't turn their heads (like the archetypal men inside the cave) because of the problem of neocolonialism, in other words a problem of hegemony. Therefore, they can't revolt, and they can't break the spell of the European hegemony.
Armah also describes those who already know the source of the problems like the Man
or the Teacher-- the latter in I really don't know which chapter exactly ( I think 5 or 6) tells the Man about Plato's Cave… But they can't make changes, and they can't wake their fellows up, because they are considered as aliens, or outsiders.

You're welcome, and I thank Mr.Haddouche because he explained it to me before he left ...