A Personal Response to "Plato's Allegory of the Cave"

As another companion piece for my current read (John Gardner’s Grendel) I read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.  In summary, the allegory serves as an explanation of enlightenment: it opens in a cave where many prisoners are chained to a rock facing a wall, where they can observe nothing but their shadows. When one of the prisoners is freed and is able to escape to the outside world, he is opened up to knowledge that he never had in his days in the cave. When he returns to the cave, he tries to share his knowledge with the other prisoners, but is ridiculed and is considered stupid for understanding things differently from the rest of the prisoners.

                Grendel directly parallels the allegory: similar to the prisoner, Grendel makes an ascent to the surface world, an ascension that brings him out of the reality that has been created for him since his birth and up to the surface world where he finds himself in a world much bigger than he ever knew. They, alone, are the ones who are able to escape to the outside world and “contemplate the sun” as Plato calls it. This is what sets them apart; they are the enlightened, the sole possessors of knowledge that nobody else of their company can comprehend without experiencing it for themselves.

                As Plato says “It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not. And this they must do, even with the prospect of death.”

                This statement brings me to the ultimate question: is it better to be enlightened, or is it safer to stay in the cave and never leave it?

                As the freed prisoner from the allegory found, once you leave the cave there is no way to return to it. Similarly, after Grendel was “charmed” by the dragon and given knowledge, he found it to be a burden, and wished that he was “curled up, asleep like a bear, in [his] cave” (pg. 137). This statement carries the full weight of Grendel’s burden. He is carrying the weight of knowledge, weight that he is finding himself having difficulty lugging around with him. Though it can be argued that Grendel (and the prisoner, for that matter) are better off knowing what the world has to offer, the burden they have to carry outweighs the benefit of the knowledge.

                This theme is seen over and over again: it is in Frankenstein, where Dr. Frankenstein pursues knowledge only to have it destroy him after his newly gained knowledge allows him to create a monster. It is in Winesburg, Ohio, when George Willard takes a “backward view of life” and is open to insecurity, pain, and struggle for the first time in his 18 years of life. It is seen in The Catcher in the Rye, when Holden Caulfield is able to see through the “phoniness” of others, and basically becomes an existentialist because of it. Over and over again, in novel after novel and page after page, the cycle is repeated: a hero is given knowledge, and it destroys him. So why seek it in the first place?

                Personally, I think it is better not to know. That is my personal opinion and I’m stating it expecting some criticism, but I would prefer not to know. A downfall is inevitable, so why speed it up by seeking knowledge that is not necessary to achieve happiness? Much like Grendel, I would rather be asleep in my cave.