PRACTICE ESSAY

     Bursting The Bubble

       We often become accustomed to the world around us.  We form habits in our actions and ways of thinking, entrapping ourselves unknowingly in a bubble of knowledge and reality.  According to the theme of Jean-Paul Sartre's play "No Exit" and Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," this bubble can only be expanded or popped through critical thinking, critical thinking that can result from an alteration in a person's environment, allowing them the opportunity to question and compare what they knew before with what they now know.

       The character of Inez in "No Exit" enters hell, or Sartre's version of it as an ordinary room containing two other people besides Inez, and she initially assumes that the man who has already been taken to the room is the torturer.  The life that she knew on Earth described to her that she would have to endure torture from weapons and fires so she expected the man to be the torturer because she was still in an unenlightened state of mind.  Later in the play, however, through some contemplation of her surroundings, Inez is the first of the group of three to realize that the people in the room are all each other's torturers.  This is illustrated through the use of irony that Inez is tortured by the love between the other two people although she is described through indirect characterization to be hateful and cruel, as seen through her reactions to the others in the room and their increasing dislike for her.  Even though she was placed in an unfamiliar place, she became enlightened to her surroundings and the new reality they presented.

       Like Inez, the prisoner who escapes the cave in the Allegory of the Cave was also the first one of a group of people to achieve enlightenment through critical thinking, through the realization that there was more to their world than what the eye could perceive.  This was symbolized through the prisoner's freedom from shackles that had previously been containing him physically and mentally in the cave.  Once outside the cave, it took some time for the prisoner to adjust to the light, just as it took Inez to adjust to Sartre's hell.  In the end, both the prisoner and Inez attempted to explain their newly discovered version of reality to the others in their group of people, but the others were unable to see past their bubble of limited knowledge.  Inez and the prisoner illustrated that enlightenment to a situation can only come from an analysis of one's thoughts, sometimes with the assistance of the enlightened, but never directly from the mind of the enlightened.

       When presented with new surroundings, a new reality, both Inez and the prisoner in the cave adapted and attempted to help others understand.  Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Sartre's "No Exit" illustrate the theme that the road to enlightenment is through critical thinking through the actions of the prisoner and the dialogue of Inez.  Both characters demonstrated that they would deal with changes in their environments with insight and critical inquiry, leading them to a better understanding of their world by bursting the small bubbles of knowledge that once surrounded them.