"ROOM, by Emma Donoghue." ROOM, by Emma Donoghue. Http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/ 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.
Plato. Allegory of the Cave.
"And if he were made to look directly at the light of the fire, it would hurt his eyes and he would turn back and take refuge in the things which he could see, which he would think really far clearer than the things being shown him."
-Socrates, Allegory of the Cave
The Allegory of the Cave is a hypothetical story told by Socrates that is used to explain appearence vs. reality. It tells of a cave where prisoners are kept, they are bound so that they can't move and can only face forward while their captors project images on the wall in front of the prisoners. One of the prisoners is set free and, since he's only seen the projections on the cave wall, is confused on what is real and what isn't. Once he figures out that the world outside the cave is real and the projections aren't, he goes back to the cave but the prisoners reject him, stuck in their own false reality.
The reasons this is like Room is because Jack is sort of like the prisoner who escaped. Room was the like the cave, and Jack was being held prisoner in it; it was all he knew to be reality. When he finds out that there is a world outside Room, he's stunned, he can't wrap his mind around it properly, just as the prisoner was blinded by the sun when he left the cave for the first time. Ma could be considered one of the formholders (the ones projecting shadows on the wall) since she sort of led him to believe that Room was the only real place there is. She's a prisoner in the sense that she can't escape from Room, but she already knows there's a world outside of it, so she's not really considered to be a cave prisoner.
The Allegory of the Cave is a hypothetical story told by Socrates that is used to explain appearence vs. reality. It tells of a cave where prisoners are kept, they are bound so that they can't move and can only face forward while their captors project images on the wall in front of the prisoners. One of the prisoners is set free and, since he's only seen the projections on the cave wall, is confused on what is real and what isn't. Once he figures out that the world outside the cave is real and the projections aren't, he goes back to the cave but the prisoners reject him, stuck in their own false reality.
The reasons this is like Room is because Jack is sort of like the prisoner who escaped. Room was the like the cave, and Jack was being held prisoner in it; it was all he knew to be reality. When he finds out that there is a world outside Room, he's stunned, he can't wrap his mind around it properly, just as the prisoner was blinded by the sun when he left the cave for the first time. Ma could be considered one of the formholders (the ones projecting shadows on the wall) since she sort of led him to believe that Room was the only real place there is. She's a prisoner in the sense that she can't escape from Room, but she already knows there's a world outside of it, so she's not really considered to be a cave prisoner.
