A Clockwork Orange as an Allusion to Platos Mimetic...

According to Plato, a philosopher enters the realm of universal knowledge when his understanding is purely an abstract science. At this stage, the philosopher is in touch with the ultimate â€Å"Form of the Good,† and knows what is best for man. Imagination plays an integral role in reaching the Form of Good, because it serves as a means to which students can understand abstract ideas and eventually reach universal thought. In his pre-modern narrative The Republic of Plato, however, Plato finds that society can be easily consumed by the mimetic imagination, in which people are tricked into believing that the imaginary is reality. Plato’s condemnation of the mimetic imagination alludes to Stanley Kubrick’s postmodern film, A Clockwork Orange†¦show more content†¦Plato finds this as a sufficient reason to denounce it as â€Å"an agency of falsehood.† Allegory of the Cave Plato’s Divided Line of four ways of thinking lead into his Allegory of the Cave, which depicts four ways of living. The Allegory of the Cave illustrates the effect of education on the human soul, specifically how it brings the student through the four divisions of the Divided Line, all the way to the Form of the Good. The scene is set in a dark cave, where a group of prisoners have lived, and never left, since birth. The prisoners are bound by chains so that they can only look straight ahead at the cave wall. A fire is lit behind them, and various statues are mounted on a partial wall behind the fire, which cast shadows on the wall the prisoners are facing. The statues are periodically moved by another group of people, of whom the prisoners are unaware of. The stories that the shadows play out is what the prisoners believe are the most real things in the world. Thus, the prisoners are in the stage of imagination, because the shadows that they take to be r eal are copies of copies of the transcendental being. They exist in a â€Å"world of becoming,† and cling to images of the constantly changing physical world. A prisoner is then released from his bonds and turns around to look at the fire and statues. At first he feels pain and confusion, but then realizes the shadows he has