Time and Plato
...only looking forward. There is Schmitt 2 also a fire burning at the back of the cave so the prisoners are able to see shadows. Men are carrying different objects and puppets around the cave casting the shadows onto the cave walls. Because the prisoners can only see the shadows, not the actual objects, they assume the shadows are truly what they appear to be. The prisoners are released and refuse to believe what they originally see. The light reveals the shadows they were seeing are not what they appeared to be. Socrates explains this to Glaucon in “On Shadows and Realities in Education” (1995): But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. The guardian opens the prisoners’ eyes to justice and truth through wisdom and education. The relationship between law and justice is often unclear and misrepresented. How are people entrusted with the responsibility of determining the truth able to determine what justice is? Jake Brigance must take a stand for his client, Carl Lee Schmitt 3 Hailey, although people disagree with his point of view. He knows Carl Lee can not receive a fair trial as long as the eyes of the law are human eyes. In his summation, Jake tells the story of the how a little girl was brutally raped and left for dead. He asks the jury: What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts? I set out to prove a black man could receive a fair trial in the south, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. That’s not the truth, because the eyes of the law are human eyes yours and mine, and until we see each other as equals, justice is never going to be evenhanded, it will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own prejudices, so until that day we have a duty under God to seek the truth, not with our eyes and not with our minds where fear and hate turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts where we don’t know better. (245) Jake encourages the jury members to put themselves in Carl Lee’s shoes. By describing the heart wrenching details of the rape, Jake hopes the jury members will sympathize and change their views of Carl Lee. The members of the jur...