The Truman Show & Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: A Journey Beyond Illusions
By: Aleeza Wasi
What do Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and The Truman Show attempt to teach us about the nature of reality?
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and The Truman Show attempt to teach us about the nature of reality by telling us we should not see the “real world” through our deceptive senses and what we perceive to be reality is merely an imitation of actual reality. Knowledge of the world acquired through the senses is fabricated, and we are unable to accurately perceive the world based solely on our senses. The world we experience is an illusion and we see nothing but imperfect imitations of the perfect form. These forms exist in a realm apart from the material world that we cannot perceive, but are accessible through philosophizing. The highest reality and true knowledge can only be grasped through philosophical reasoning as opposed to just the imitations produced by our senses. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato illustrates a situation in which humans are imprisoned by false images, which is the world we perceive with our senses. Nevertheless, they can achieve liberation, which is knowledge, by escaping the cave through reasoning. Similarly, on the set of The Truman Show, a live 24/7 reality television show, Seahaven Island is the sensory world of the unsuspecting star, Truman Burbank…
