Q: 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”?

A: Mildred, Clarisse, and Guy (the main characters of F451) are all characters in Fahrenheit 451 that are similar to characters in Simile of the cave. Mildred is Blinded from the world and the media forces to know what she thinks she knows. This is exactly how the people in the caves are like. They think they know what everything is because they only know about the shadows, they don't even accept the idea of their being anything else that easily. Clarisse is like the philosophers in the simile of the cave. Clarisse always asks 'why' and does not sit there to be told 'how'. The philosophers in the simile of the cave's whole life is based on 'why'. In Fahrenheit 451 it seems like Clarisse asks a lot of good questions and realizes things that everyone fails to recognize. Guy always thought burning book was normal and that information forced into him was just a part of his life. Once he was introduced into a new way of thinking he thought that he was previously doing everything wrong and saw how he was corrupted. The 'prisoners' in the cave are like this because they thought the shadows were normal and that they saw shadows. yet once they were free the realized from reverse engineering that they saw light and not shadows; that light casted shadows and they could see the shadows but thats not what made them.