The Simile of the Cave vs F451

1. Compare and contrast what Socrates says in “The Simile of the Cave” with Fahrenheit 451. How are characters like Mildred similar to characters in “Simile of the Cave”?

The obvios similarity to Mildred is the people tied up in the cave. They're entire lives consists of staring at the shadows of figures being cast upon a wall. It's not that they are stupid and don't have the level of intellegence to realize that shadows are not reality, it's that they have witnessed nothing else. They have not been exposed to reality and therefore cannot be expected to know anything about it, or even agnolage that it exists. We cannot help to label Mildred as unintelligent, because she does not see that she is not truly happy and that her life is an endless circle, where Montag realized this and acts upon it. But consider this for a moment; if Clarisse had not come along (just as if someone came and untied one of the people in the cave) then Montag would never have become any different from Clarisse. He would never have come remotetly close to finding reality, finding the truth. But someone had to be there to open Clarisse's eyes. Nomatter what, someone along the line has to have been exposed to the real truth. A person cannot just be born knowing the truth. they know only what is told to them and what they expeirience. The less expeirience a person has, the farther away they are from understanding reality. I think this ties into what Socrates is saying about the importance of education, as well as his beliefs that philosophers should rule, as opposed to lawers or mililitary leaders, or whoever else could be in power. While education is essential, it does not work as a succesful means for people to discover reality. Consider the people in Fahrenheit 451. They were all perfectly educated, they could add and subtract and recite history, and drive, but their lives were so far from reality and they didn't even have the faintest idea. And those who did get some glimpse of what was really going on were in hiding, like Faber and the men on the railroad tracks, or were killed like Clarisse. Just like the philosophers of Socrates's time were hated by some, and put on trial, when really, they were the ones that were, as Socrates put it, "better and more fully educated than the rest". While it may seem prideful of him to admit this, reading his work I don't find it hard to believe they he truly was intaluectually "above" the average person.