Truth Essay
Truth Essay
Miles Dijan
October 8, 2013
Block 2 Day 2
The writer Oscar Wilde once said that “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Wilde claims that truth is hardly wholesome and unadulterated, but rather tainted, or polluted. Wilde also states how truth is never straightforward and effortless. Truth could come with questions, ambiguous feelings, and abstract thoughts. Three pieces of literature exemplify Oscar Wilde’s quote about truth. In The “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, and “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold the concept of a vague, confusing, and tainted truth is depicted widely throughout the works of literature. In “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato uses the theme of appearance versus reality to portray his perspective on truth. In this piece of literature men lay restrained underground in a cave with no way out. In their cave reality is “nothing but the shadows of those artificial objects.” The man’s life, his reality, his truth, is based among shadows cast on the walls by the fire burning behind them. They know nothing else to be true. Therefore, it may appear that the truth for these men is very simple and pure, staring them right in the face, the shadows. When one man is freed from his shackles and forced to look into the light for the first time, what he thought was reality was fictitious now. He has become enlightened in a way and breaks away from using his five scenes that he used in the physical world of the cave. The man starts to have faith, believing in something even if you can’t see it, and he looks inside to his immortal soul. He starts to reach this higher level of existence that no one in the cave is experiencing because they are trapped in a false reality guided by scenes and not by intuition. What was once pure is now tainted with his true beliefs. He realizes that physical objects aren’t real at all. Only the idea of that object is
Miles Dijan
October 8, 2013
Block 2 Day 2
The writer Oscar Wilde once said that “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Wilde claims that truth is hardly wholesome and unadulterated, but rather tainted, or polluted. Wilde also states how truth is never straightforward and effortless. Truth could come with questions, ambiguous feelings, and abstract thoughts. Three pieces of literature exemplify Oscar Wilde’s quote about truth. In The “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, and “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold the concept of a vague, confusing, and tainted truth is depicted widely throughout the works of literature. In “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato uses the theme of appearance versus reality to portray his perspective on truth. In this piece of literature men lay restrained underground in a cave with no way out. In their cave reality is “nothing but the shadows of those artificial objects.” The man’s life, his reality, his truth, is based among shadows cast on the walls by the fire burning behind them. They know nothing else to be true. Therefore, it may appear that the truth for these men is very simple and pure, staring them right in the face, the shadows. When one man is freed from his shackles and forced to look into the light for the first time, what he thought was reality was fictitious now. He has become enlightened in a way and breaks away from using his five scenes that he used in the physical world of the cave. The man starts to have faith, believing in something even if you can’t see it, and he looks inside to his immortal soul. He starts to reach this higher level of existence that no one in the cave is experiencing because they are trapped in a false reality guided by scenes and not by intuition. What was once pure is now tainted with his true beliefs. He realizes that physical objects aren’t real at all. Only the idea of that object is