orming the rest of the captives of what he saw. He has to explain to them that the ultimate reality is not the shadows on the wall but what is seen once you’re in the light. He then experiences anguish because the captives will not believe him. The essay states that: “Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death” (p. 1185). The cave is their world and what they see is their truth. The escaped prisoner is now an outsider and suffers because the other captives could not comprehend that what they are really seeing is just a bad distortion of reality. In “Existentialism,” man experiences anguish because he would not be able to get away from his responsibility of his actions and his choices because the decisions he makes not only affects him but those around him too. The narrator states that: “Every man ought to say to himself, ‘Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?’ And if he does not say that to himself, he is masking his anguish” (p. 1292). Every man experiences anguish because they have the freedom of choice but the responsibility of all men. Therefore every choice that man makes must be a good one. Both Plato and Sartre have many different views in their essays and one opposing view is about the good and the bad. In Sartre’s essay, good decisions or choices are made because it is what is good for every man and that , “to choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all” (p. 1291). Every man then does not choose the evil becaus...
