Allegory of the Cave and Slaughterhouse Five - Case Study Example

Philosophy 15 December Allegory of the Cave, Matrix, Cathedral, Slaughterhouse Five According to Socrates, the one who will descend again will be ridiculed for his being unaccustomed to vision in the dark; on the first attempt to persuade anyone to ascend, such person will be killed (Plato, Republic VII). In Plato’s Apology, Socrates regrets that the Athenians had been deceived by the false teachers in their childhood, when they were most perceptive (like the prisoners in the cave); he even uses the word “shadows” for this and affirms that death is better than such a life. In Crito, Socrates is accused of leading the Athenians the wrong path (other similarity with Republic is the primacy of just and wise life over life as such an); however, this time, Socrates does not want to go from his “cave” (literal, not metaphorical) to the light: he sees the light in the literal “cave”. In Phaedo, Socrates speaks about captivity in a different sense: people are the prisoners of gods and of their own bodies. In all the three last dialogues, Socrates resembles a descending wise man that is going to be killed by his ignorant counterparts. 2. Both types of blindness result from being unaccustomed to new conditions, but the first leads to the feeling of mastery over the universe, while the second is connected with the clear understanding that the darkness ahead is no progress. In the first case, the prisoner experiences uncertainty; in the second one, the free man deliberately chooses his painful path. 3. The Matrix contains many references to the allegory: first, the image of corridor (the light in the end of the digital corridor when the characters transit between realities; the words of Morpheus “I can only show you the door; you are to walk through”); second, the state of captivity (human beings are turned into batteries, and Morpheus comments: “a slave… born into bondage”); the illusive nature of the slaves’ worldview (“Do You believe in fate, Neo?” – “No… because I am out of the control of my life”; this is the mental projection of your digital self”); last but not least, the pain of the afterlight (“Everybody falls the first time”). Interestingly, this pain also has merely physical nature and results from being unaccustomed: the transition through the mirror and plugs undertakes the grimace of suffering; Neo’s muscles are atrophied; it is also painstaking to master his mind during the kung fu session. Unexpectedly, the movie shares with the dialogues one of the most significant aspects of Ancient Greek philosophy, namely, the belief in fate. But fate is precisely the point in which The Matrix and the allegory differ: in the dialogue, the person who ascends is taken from the cave by chance, while Neo is chosen. His task is not to liberate mankind. Indeed, Morpheus suggests that he would not ever want to return. 4. The narrator has been chained by the illusion of easy entertainment, superiority, and concentration on possessing people and goods. This illusion is supported in him by TV: “The truth is, cathedrals don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. They’re something to look, at on late-night TV” (Carver 100). His life is meaningless, and not just because of lack of religious belief. But then he manages to acquire a new vision with the mediation of another person (Robert), and people become important to him again. 5. I think that the narrator wants to enjoy his new feeling of communion and is defamiliarized vision. He describes it as being outside the drawn boundaries of his house (Carver 101), which is comparable with the excitement the person who becomes able to see the sun feels in the Socratic dialogue. 6. Socratic irony is the behavior oscillating between situational irony and Greek eiron (deception, disarmament); it occurs when one pretends to be illiterate in order to entice the companion into a challenging intellectual trap (Wolfsdorf 176-177). In the short story, the blind man already seems depraved of vision, like Socrates sometimes deliberately appears simple-minded or even insane. Robert’s remarks also count: for instance, he tries to encourage the main character with simple phrases like “Bub, it’s all right” (Carver 99) or “You’re doing fine” (Carver 101). Robert’s behavior is “Socratically” provocative when he insists on talking, even having the feeling that his companion does not want to talk. 7. Billy is an optometrist, that is, he helps people with their eyesight. After his visit to Tralfamador, Billy became eager to share what he had learned about time, to give them new vision: “He was doing nothing less now, he thought, then prescribing corrective lenses for Earthling souls. So many of those souls were lost and wretched, Billy believed, because they could not see as well as his little green friends on Tralfamadore” (Vonnegut ch. II). Having read Billy’s letters about Tralfamador, his daughter Barbara insists on Billy’s retirement. Everybody believes him to be insane. 8. Tralfamadorians believe that time is not structured as a single line: rather, every moment bears the possibility of past and future moments. This means that people never die, because when they are dead in one moment, they are simultaneously alive in the other moments. Billy compares it with the situation when his congregation was “theoretically spotted” from the sky and “theoretically” bombed while in reality they were eating breakfast (Vonnegut ch. II). George Nathan, who had once lived in the Royalton Hotel room occupied by Billy, is also “still alive somewhere” (Vonnegut ch. IX). That is why Billy never knows whether to say ‘farewell’ or ‘hello’. 9. Cinderella appears in the text two times. First time, the soldier playing Cinderella sings in the song that the bell has struck (Vonnegut ch. V). This is an elegant reference to Billy’s time-traveling: he never knows when the bell will strike and the scene will change completely. Second time, Billy puts on Cinderella’s “shoes” (boots painted silver), returning from the world of lust to the world of poverty and humiliating clothes. 10. Adam and Eve of The Slaughterhouse Five are Billy and a 20 years old sexy motion picture star Montana Wildhack under the dome in the zoo of Tralfamador (Vonnegut ch. V). They are brought together for Tralfamadoriands to see how earthlings mate. They are no masters of universe, like Adam and Eve; rather, they are animals under experiement. Moreover, this is not the beginning of the human world but the end: Bily tells Montana about Dresden, which is rather an apocalyptic picture. At the same time, they are not treated badly; Billy sees his captivity as an attractive opportunity, at least for pleasant sex. Works Cited Carver, R. “Cathedral”. Carver, R. Cathedral: Short Stories. London: Vintage, 1989. 91-101. Print. Plato. “Apology”. Transl. Benjamin Jowett. Electronic. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html December 15, 2012. Plato. “Crito”. Transl. Benjamin Jowett. Electronic. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html December 15, 2012. Plato. “Phaedo”. Transl. Benjamin Jowett. Electronic. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html December 15, 2012. Plato. “The Republic”. Transl. Benjamin Jowett. Electronic. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html December 15, 2012. The Matrix. Dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1999. DVD. Vonnegut, K. Slaughterhouse Five: Or, the Children’s Crusade. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1970. Electronic. Retrieved from http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=B238DC565A4E2BB3FA5FBA8D9E522C5A December 15, 2012. Read More