The Myth of the Cave

The Cave (Random House, $4.95), which is Robert Penn Warren’s first novel in four years, has for an epigraph a quotation from the seventh book of Plato’s Republic: ‘You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.’ ‘Like ourselves,’ I replied: ‘and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?’ ‘True,’ he said; ‘how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?’ ‘And it would appear that the “form” of Mr. Warren’s novel is built around a modern reinterpretation of Plato’s myth of the cave. For Mr. Warren, the predicament of the prisoners in the cave would seem to dramatize the perpetual human predicament: we are all such prisoners, enslaved by one delusion or another, seeking to discern in the shadows on the cave wall the realities which are ourselves and the selves of others.

Mr. Warren is pursuing a theme which he began long ago and has continued to develop, with great effectiveness, in both fiction and poetry. This theme may perhaps best be put in the form of a question: how can the individual define (and sometimes even find) his real self in the face of the various forces which would seek to confine or even destroy that self? Sometimes these depersonalizing forces are the more “individual” ones-pride, lust, remorse for past sins. Sometimes they are more “social,” and society itself (especially the modern society which hankers to “plan for” and ultimately “use” the individual) seems the villain. But usually, it is a combination of several of these which the individual must combat in order to find and be his true self.

RD

About the Author

Robert Y. Drake Jr.

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The Cave (Random House, $4.95), which is Robert Penn Warren’s first novel in four years, has for an epigraph a quotation from the seventh book of Plato’s Republic: ‘You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.’ ‘Like ourselves,’ I replied: ‘and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?’ ‘True,’ he said; ‘how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?’ ‘And it would appear that the “form” of Mr. Warren’s novel is built around a modern reinterpretation of Plato’s myth of the cave. For Mr. Warren, the predicament of the prisoners in the cave would seem to dramatize the perpetual human predicament: we are all such prisoners, enslaved by one delusion or another, seeking to discern in the shadows on the cave wall the realities which are ourselves and the selves of others.

Mr. Warren is pursuing a theme which he began long ago and has continued to develop, with great effectiveness, in both fiction and poetry. This theme may perhaps best be put in the form of a question: how can the individual define (and sometimes even find) his real self in the face of the various forces which would seek to confine or even destroy that self? Sometimes these depersonalizing forces are the more “individual” ones-pride, lust, remorse for past sins. Sometimes they are more “social,” and society itself (especially the modern society which hankers to “plan for” and ultimately “use” the individual) seems the villain. But usually, it is a combination of several of these which the individual must combat in order to find and be his true self.