Living the Life: 1984, Allegory of the Cave, and Why Do People Follow The Crowd
How would you feel to be under constant surveillance, to be told what to think and do? If you had the slightest taste of freedom in a controlling environment would you fight for that freedom or not even try to grasp it. In both 1984, Allegory of the Cave, and Why Do People Follow The Crowd, you have selected citizens that break the rules of society and learn the dark secrets of their puppet masters. From controlling government to a cave, chained people, and shadows both of these stories tell the eerie side of governments.
With a controlling government in Oceania, and the cave you really see similarities of the people in them. If you ask anyone, being trapped in a cave is absolutely terrible, but being born in a cave with no knowledge of the outside world and being fed false lies every day on your life really affects who you are and how you think. In Oceania, the government is constantly watching the people of screens, controlling how the people think, and having your freedom of expression taken away from you. In both of these instances, the people in the societies can’t have original thoughts, they are just simply being programmed and are conforming without asking questions.
Next, is the idea of being chained. In 1984 Big Brother holds the chains, and he has the people of Oceania chained. Winston and Julia are constantly running away from Big Brother, try to better themselves and to experience freedom. They both want to live a life better than what they are currently living. But with Big Brother always watching them it soons becomes too hard for them to do. Also going back to the surveillance, that is chains holding people back from freely expressing themselves. In Allegory of the Cave, the people of that community are chained to the wall. They face the cave walls for their whole entire lives. In both cases, the people in these societies are forced to not face the truth and are constantly being manipulated.
Does living in the dark, or in this case shadows, make you exhibit fear, or make you feel concerned? The people of Oceania can’t see how the government changes them. For example, all of the people are told, and believe that 2+2=5. The people can’t fathom what it is like to live in the light. In Allegory of the Cave, shadows take a turn to the actual relm. Since the people are chained to a wall in a cave this means there is not much light. The people have a glare of light that shines through the cracks of the cave, and produces shadows. The people believe that only shadows exist in life. One day, one of the people breaks free from the cave and gets to experience real light, real freedom, and that becomes a life-changing event.
Both of these stories can relate to the article Why Do People Follow The Crowd, this article talks about how people naturally conform to follow the crowd and not to stick out. There are a few experiments in this article to test people’s unconscious state of mind to see if they conform easily to what others are thinking. This article states, “And for those who went against the group, there was another intriguing result: their brains lit up in a place called the amygdala, which Berns calls “the fear center of the brain” You can use this same ideology and apply it to both 1984, and Allegory of the Cave to better help understand why they act like they do. It could just be the simple answer of how fear manipulates even the strongest of people and can force them to conform to something that they know is not true.
In the examples from 1984, Allegory of the Cave, and Why Do People Follow The Crowd, you can see the lasting effects on having a controlling government. Try to understand what it would be like being trapped in a cave, chained to a wall, and to live your life in the darkness of shadows. Would it be easier to follow the crowd, and to fit in and not to stick out? Or would it be better to try to break the laws and have faith in what is believed to be wrong by others?
