You Are Mad, And Gone The Wrong Way You Take Essays - Assumption

You Are Mad, And Gone The Wrong Way You Take You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for beauty. - lawyer from A.C.s The Bet Through analyzing this excerpt from the story of The Bet by Anton Chekhov, one can sense the imprisoned lawyer criticizing the banker of being ignorant and insane. What exactly does it mean to be insane or ignorant? By definition, for one to be classified as insane, they would have the inability to mediate with reality at will. The definition of ignorance can be grasped by analyzing Platos concept of Simile of the Cave. Ignorance is depicted as the lowest level or form of knowledge one can obtain. If one would want to deepen their understanding of The Bet, Simile of the Cave would smoothly coincide and explain the concepts of ignorance and insanity present in this story. Before comparing the two stories, we must comprehend Simile of the Cave. The journey of the prisoner from ignorance to the truth, holds deep and significant meanings. Recalling from the story, the prisoner is forced from the realm of ignorance to guesswork, zoa, mathematica, and finally to archai. As the journey through the cave to the outside world is analyzed, one can evidently see the prisoner rise above ignorance by trying to seek the truth (in the world of archai). Knowing that the prisoner learned many truths, it is valid to say that he is becoming wiser. By the time the emancipated prisoner reaches and becomes content in the world of archai (truth), the guards struggle to take him back to the benches in the world of guesswork. When the prisoner is seated back in guesswork, he explains of his findings to the other prisoners that remained on the benches during his voyage. We find that after he explains of his new findings and theories, he is classified as insane by the rest of the prisoners. The other prisoners do not believe him, due to that they have not experienced it for themselves. The question of who the real insane and ignorant man is, now remains. Through the eyes of the prisoner-philosopher, it is the other prisoners that are insane and ignorant. Why? It is because the prisoners are taking falsehood for truth (Chekhov, 375). They fail to believe that there is actually more to the world besides mere shadows upon a cave wall. Yet, the other prisoners probably classified the prisoner-philosopher as insane, due to him jabber of concepts that they have never heard of within their lifetime on the bench. Clearly, ignorance and insanity play a critical part of the voyage through the cave. The voyage of the young lawyer versus the journey of the prisoner-philosopher are very similar. Within the first year of the lawyers imprisonment he does not accept any fine wines or tabacco, and finds entertainment by playing the piano. During the times he does not play the piano, the guards would bring him books to read. At first he was sent novels of comedy, mystery, romance, and fantasy. By the end of the 4 year, he does not play the piano, yet he decides to start reading classics. Just as the prisoner repeatedly named shadows on the wall, the lawyer frequently read of fictional books with the same plot. The repetitive plots may be due to the selection of the guards. Therefore, these guards are similar to the parade of men that force the prisoners to see the same shadows constantly. Yet, with the amount of books that the lawyer read, the plots were bound to be repetitive. After examining the lawyers status, we can figuratively say that the lawyer is still chained to the bench in the realm of guesswork. By the turn of the lawyers fifth year, the lawyer has gone through a dramatic change. It is through the truth test of correspondence that makes the lawyer not want to read any more books. The lawyer is bored of reading novels and classics because the plots of each book became predictable. At this point the lawyer is found constantly crying, arguing and destroying letters that he wrote. There are many explanations to the lawyers frustration. A few reasons is that the original length of time the bet was suppose to last was five years and not fifteen. Plus the bet was senseless since he could only try the alternative punishment and live to talk about it afterwards. The reason that probably devastated the lawyer the most was that he was imprisoned for not