Hello, I am looking for someone to write an article on The Road as The Cave of Enlightenment. It needs to be at least 1250 words. Plato was himself a disciple of the great philosopher Socrates and much of his understanding of the world was shaped by Socrates’ teachings. Therefore, an understanding of Socrates’ concept of ethics is relevant to learning Plato’s ideas of enlightenment well enough to trace them through McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel. Socrates claimed that a man cannot accurately judge his own capabilities and thus determine his true unique path to the greatest good based on his accurate assessment of his strengths and knowledge of his weaknesses unless he has first taken the time to first know himself through questioning his own beliefs. The man who has taken the time to know himself from within will then be able to receive instruction from within regarding those things which are good (moral and ethical) and those things which are not. As the man and boy travel through the barren landscape in McCarthy’s novel, the ethics of the boy clearly develop along different lines of reasoning from the ethics of his father, allowing each to discover different paths of inner salvation. This progression becomes clear when one compares McCarthy’s book to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave which discusses exactly this journey of enlightenment.

Plato’s allegory begins with all humans living within a dark cave. They are chained in their seats and positioned in such a way that they can only see the blank wall in front of them. Socrates explains within Plato’s story “here they [human beings] have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads” (Kreis 2004). From what they can see, the world is composed of shadows, which are actually shadows of things that are passing behind them, illuminated by a light source they aren’t aware of.&nbsp. What the people know about their world is two dimensional, with no depth or texture.&nbsp. Socrates explains, again within the story, that an individual released from the bonds that bind him and led to the surface “will suffer sharp pains. the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows”.&nbsp.