I will begin with an outline of the allegory itself, subsequently connecting the work with an analysis of the piece that will include my interpretation of its ultimate depiction of the progression of education in man. To establish a basis for this article, I will begin with a brief description of the allegory of the cave as depicted in Book VII of Plato's Republic, and connect the stages of enlightenment illustrated in the Cave to the levels of the Line from Book VI. The speaker, Socrates, presents the interlocutor with a hypothetical scene in which some prisoners are locked in the depths of a cave and chained in such a way that they can only see a wall that is directly in front of them. Behind them, shielded men carry statues and props representing things from nature so that a flame can cast the shadows of those puppets onto the wall visible to the prisoners. Assuming that the prisoners are so restrained from movement that they can see nothing but the wall and the silhouettes projected onto it, and that they have spent their entire lives in this position, we can extrapolate that the prisoners' entire visual world consists of shadows and the scenes acted by them. Therefore, it is safe to infer that the prisoners live in their own world, where the shadow of a statue is, for example, a real man. Such a prisoner could be seen as the equivalent of an uneducated man, or someone at the lowest level of the Line who takes a concept and bases their interpretation of it from a completely made-up source that lacks any reality. In other words, the shadow of a man's statue is in no way related to the Form of Man since it is a visual representation of something that is not Man. The scene continues with a prisoner freeing himself from... middle of paper... or returning to the Cave to help others free themselves from their chains and fight to get as far out of the Cave as possible. . The more educated and enlightened the city is, the stronger it will be and it is the philosopher's duty to rule within the cave and influence others to pursue the highest level of education they are capable of achieving. Only the philosopher, who is himself driven by the desire for truth, can create the environment that will allow those same desires to flourish in others; thus allowing more philosophers to discover the Form of the Good and in exchange become teachers who will help create a strong democratic state. The purpose of an ideal education, of having philosophers reach the highest level of the Line, is to create virtuous and competent teachers who will move the public, the government, towards righteousness..