Writing a quotation essay is not as easy a task as one would think. It is not the writing that is difficult, but the selection. The staggering number of quotes in existence makes it difficult for an author to select one. After all a quote, by definition is mealy something that any person has said or written down. This opens up the entirety of all human experience for discussion. A way that one can begin to sift through this vast heap of information is to limit their search to quotations that have profound religious or social implications. Although this eliminates the vast majority of the heap, it still leaves more information than any one person could hope to digest in there lifetime. Sifting through that vast an amount of information can make one feel as though they are trapped in Plato's allegorical cave. This allegory is an example that Plato used to help demonstrate man's lack of understanding about the universe around him.
             In the allegory Plato describes a cave, the cave is very deep and the light of the sun has never touched its lowermost reaches. In those dark places prisoners are chained, chained so that they cannot move at all. They are not even able to turn their heads a fraction of an inch. Far away, lies a low burning fire, the fire is too far for them to see anything by its light. All that they can see is an indistinct flickering light off in the distance. As the prisoners sit, forced to stare at the light, people carrying tools walk between them and the fire temporarily blocking its light. The prisoners get no other outside clues or stimuli, so they are left alone in the dark trying to determine just what these strangely shaped gapes in the light are.
             This allegory is very complex, and has been interpreted to mean many different things. The interpretation that applies most to this essay is perhaps the most basic and simple. The simplest interpretation of the allegory is that the bound priso...