Saturday, November 30, 2013

Comparative Essay

          Imagine a sound just outside the field of your peripheral vision, or an action that inspires or outrages you. Being a slave from the "Allegory of the Cave", your response to this event would be bewildering. On the other hand, Estella from "No Exit", would now how to take this response and show it through her emptions. Their response reflects the characterization, theme, tone, and general philosophy of the author, Plato and Sartre, who created the characters.

          Living in a cave without knowledge of anything, but the shadows on the wall and what you perceive them to be, and then walking outside of the cave in itself would be a shock let alone hearing something out of the norms of your vision. Lets say for example, a tree falls in the distance that you don't see but you can hear. The slave from the cave was raised to imagine things that aren't factually true but are relevant to the sound they have heard. Watching shadows on a cave wall all their lives taught them to perceive them as their minds allow. For the slave who escaped and was enlightened by the sun, his ideas of what the sound could now be might have changed, as the slave would now second guess everything he knows for his whole life was sheltered from the truth. Plato uses his characters to reflect the tone of his story by setting a mood of great knowledge and higher power.

          Like a slave from a cave, Estella would react the same to a tree falling that she couldn't see. From "No Exit", Estella believes her being in hell was a mistake and that she would argue to the death that her actions are pure. Therefore, she would take the sound and determine it to be of any sound that so pleases her. As for an action that outrages her, she would take swift action and confront the problem immediately. Sartre wrote her character as a women of a strong mind who was never shy to do what she wanted. A slave from the cave would be very concerned as to why someone would cause an action to outrage them in the first place. Being sheltered you wouldn't understand quite a lot and if someone was cross towards you, a slave wouldn't know the difference.

           What is relevant to one person could be perceive in a different way for another. One sound to someone could be a car crashing into a wall, while to someone else it could be a door being slammed shut. Estella and the slave both are able to create an image of the sound, although they may be different, their minds both design it. Plato and Sartre were able to incorporate tone and theme all with the characters they chose to write.

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