Plato Essay Beginnings

Plato's Allegory of the Cave uses the hypothetical tale of prisoners in a cave whose vision has only seen the shadows on the cave of the wall and know only of the shadows on the wall to represent the hidebound public of his day and the dire need for education and enlightenment. Plato stresses the need to seek out the truest form of knowledge, that being original ideas which from comes forth all we perceive with the senses, and this true knowledge which is sought is figuratively described in the allegory as the surface outside of the cave. When one man had found enlightenment (reached the surface) and sought to enlighten the others, he was rejected and killed for the men were shackled by their own ignorance and unwilling to believe anything other than the cave they were familiar with. Plato's entire allegory is an extended metaphor for the need of education and pursuit of higher knowledge in a world where such enlightenment  is rejected because of the unwillingness of it's people to explore outside the realm of what they are familiar with.