AP Lit Period 4

December 16, 2009

Allegory and Matrix Notes

Many works of lit character struggles between painful truth and beautiful lie. The struggle show
the complexities in the determining this answer and what the eventual answer is.

1. “ignorance is bliss” as cipher says in the matrix is the idea that people have been adopted
2. painful truth- better to endure anything than to return to the cave
3. the people were in caves, until true enlightenment
4.

A metaphorical narrative in prose or verse in which fictional figures and actions usually
represent truths or generalizations about human existence.

Socrate’s short story “Allegory of the Cave” (1894) asserts the idea that people within society
can never see real objects but constantly changing shadows or perceptions of the perfect image.
Socrates supports this idea through the use of the extended metaphor of the cave in which the
prisoners do not understand the nature of the fire, but simply acknowledge it as a source of heat
in order to draw parallel to the situation of the prisoners to that of those in society where people
continue to live with a false perception of knowledge but do not understand the true source.
Socrates writes this metaphor as a warning and a guide to society from the state leaders, citizens,
and finally to the philosophers who ultimately have a moral duty as the “enlightened” to enter the
“darkness” and guide the prisoners out.