In his novel Being There, Jerzy Kosinski shows how today's culture has moved away from the ideal society that Plato describes in his allegory of the cave. In his metaphor, Plato describes the different stages of life and education through the use of a cave. In the first level of the cave, Plato describes the prisoners chained and facing a blank wall. Behind them is a wall of fire with a divider on which various objects are placed and manipulated by another group of people. These shadows are the only action they have ever seen. They can only talk to the surrounding prisoners and watch the puppet show on the wall in front of them. Naturally the prisoners come to believe that the shadows on the wall in front of them are reality. The second level of the cave is where the prisoner is freed from the chains and is forced to look at the firelight behind him. The light hurts his eyes and after a moment of pain and confusion he sees the statues on the partial wall in front of him. These were what caused the shadows he believed to be reality. This enlightenment is the beginning of the prisoner's education. Then he is brought from the cave into the sunlight. At first the prisoner can only see shadows, then reflections, then real people and things. He realizes that the statues were only copies of the things he now sees outside the cave. Once he becomes accustomed to the light, he will look up to the sky to gain a true understanding of what reality is. This is what Plato calls this understanding the Form of Goodness. In Being There, Chance is in the deepest part of the cave, but the world around him is too ignorant to realize it (Johnson 51-54) The main character of Kosinski's novel is Chance, a... middle of paper.. . has been absorbed by television to the point that television is no longer a fiction. Programs are now mostly about reality. Society has accepted a reality based on what it sees on television. Education is no longer about going out and experiencing the world for yourself, but rather shoving information down students' throats, in the hope that the student can then regurgitate it on a piece of paper for a grade. Kosinski sheds light on this problem and shows that if it is not solved, the many ignorant people in the world could control the way we live our lives. Some might even say that many of the leaders of today's society are very similar to Chance, appearing to the public to be much more intelligent than they actually are. Bibliography Johnson and Reath. Ethics. Belmont: Thomson, 2004. Kosinski, Jerzy. Be there. New York: Grove P, 1970.