Simple Perspectives by MTabek Written in November of 2001.
	In the last chapter of the original Star Wars Trilogy-The Return of the Jedi-Luke Skywalker questions his mentor and former Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, about the death of his father. Luke had learned that his father, whom he thought to be killed by Darth Vader, was in fact Darth Vader himself. Luke asked Obi-Wan why he was lied to. In defense, Obi-Wan explained that "...what I told you was true, from a certain point of view. Luke, you will learn that many things depend greatly on our own point of view..." A perspective is defined in the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as "... the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed..." or as "...the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance ..." (868). Plato, in his essay "The Allegory of the Cave," used this idea of perspective as the major point of relevance. He used the imagery of people, literally 'growing up' to learn what life is in this cave, and then has one of these people brought up to the surface, and shown that another way of life exists. Plato continues on to explain the process in which this person must travel, for the person's perspective is literally flipped upside down. As Plato describes: "At first, when any of them [the prisoners] are liberated and... suddenly... stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive someone saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but now... his eye is turned towards... real existence..."(Plato 317). Here Plato explains the harshness of a new view of the world. As we grow through our childhood years, we develop our own personal perspectives on the world. Our society, our parents, all have an affect on this, but we ourselves develop what we believe in. In the cave of Plato's allegory, the prisoners had become accustomed to believe that the shadows they saw on the wall were real. When they heard the people behind them - for real people were making the shadows - talking, the prisoners believed that it was the shadows talking. Their entire world, their entire belief structure of what existed, was only the shadows on the wall in front of them. They knew nothing of the world around them. The quote that 'ignorance is bliss', that is so often used in our culture, seems to apply here, for when the prisoners were brought to the surface, they were in utter disbelief. Their initial reaction was that this world they saw in front of them had to be the illusion, the fake world, for it did not go along with what they 'knew' to be true. Living as they had for so long, the prisoners were happy with the knowledge they possessed. They knew of no other way of thought, and since they had no knowledge of a higher state of 'enlightenment', they were contented with what they had. This is so often something that our culture cannot comprehend. We must know everything; we can't just let a fact exist based on pure faith alone. Unfortunately, this knowledge that our society strives so hard to find, remains elusive, causing anger, strife, and grief. In his essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about this fact, stating how "...The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter..." (185-86). Other countries, which are considered less powerful when compared to the United States, are moving faster toward consolidation of every race into their culture. The United States, one of the most powerful of the worlds countries, seems opposite in that fact. We move much slower, and with much more hesitation, toward equal rights for all races. It seems then, that people who have less power, less strength, seem more willing to 'get along' with other races, more so than those who are strong. Throughout history it has been shown that the stronger the will of an individual, the colder and harder their hearts seem to be. This is an idea that King seemed to want to have stated. He knew that if the African American people were to gain any rights, the hearts of the American people would have to be warmed and softened. The Americans, however, thought that if that happened, they would lose the strength that they had for so long tried to keep. In this conflict arises the new sun of enlightenment. With this initial shock and when the people grow "...accustomed to the sight of the upper world..." they will soon "...see...[themselves]...in [their] proper place, and not in another; and [they] will contemplate [this in terms of what they are]..." (Plato 317-18). Throughout this semester, that is what I have been challenged to do. As Plato explained to us, we must take what we learn, and then take the next step in our journey to edification. Using the newfound knowledge, we have to shape our own views, our own perspectives, around this new idea. First, we had the reality of Willi dressed as a girl. Even with my uneasiness, I realized that Willi acts as a buffer, or more like a merger, showing thorough separation how similar both men and women actually are. During our second paper I described how different writing styles affect the conveyance of emotional impact. I had developed the idea of how first person narratives, like Harriet Jacobs's "Free at Last," had a more emotional impact that theoretical essays like Carol Gilligan's "Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle." But now I look back at that paper in front of me, and I find that even that viewpoint has changed. King wrote his letter in the form of an essay, not at all a first person narrative, but in that, King inserted more emotion that I found from Jacobs. It's not hard to come to this conclusion however when King writes: "...when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim...when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro...when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'...There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair...you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience" (King Jr. 186). These words, even though not in the form of a first person narrative, hit me with more impact that the entirety of Jacobs's narrative. In our last paper, we read over Howard Gardner's essay "A Rounded Version: the Theory of Multiple Intelligences." I was forced to use Gardner's thoughts on intelligence and education, and relate it to Jacobs and Frederick Douglass's narrative "From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave." This paper, more along with the other two, gave me a different perspective on the effects of education when put in terms of slavery. Growing up as I have in America, I have taken for granted the ability to learn. By reading over these narratives, I found out about a group of people who were ignorant. Forced to be slaves, they were denied the right to an education, and so it was through great struggle that a few gained that privilege. I had never imagined our society in quite so personal a way before, and it has helped me to re-examine what I know, just as the prisoners in Plato's cave were forced to do. We must realize though, that our enlightenment means nothing if we do not share it with others, and allow another to reach the new horizon that we now see upon. Plato gave a set of instructions on what is required of those who "...have [been] educated...far better and more perfectly than they [others] have been..." saying that "...each of you...must go down to the general underground...and get the habit of seeing in the dark..." (Plato 322). Once we have learned of what we were ignorance of (this new enlightenment), we should then go back and look upon the level that we were formerly on. By taking this new paradigm with us, we can reexamine what we knew before. When this has been done, then we are required to take this information, and pass it on to others. Only through the teaching of new thoughts can we truly appreciate what we have learned, and truly begin to apply it to our lives. While a perspective can be so casually defined as "...the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance..." we must realize that these views are not set in stone, and they never will be. We must be under the constant vigilance of learning, and growing. Then we are under the requirement to pass this on to others. What good is information if only one person knows about it? Knowledge, although kept from some people, is free, and should stay that way. It is the only way to grow as a society, and more importantly, as an individual. Works Cited King, Martin Luther Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail." World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. 6th Ed. Boston: Bedford, 2002. 179-197. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 10th Ed. Springfield: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1999. 868. Plato. "The Allegory of the Cave." World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. 6th Ed. Boston: Bedford, 2002. 313-323. Star Wars: Episode V: The Return of the Jedi. Dir. George Lucas. Perf. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Alec Guiness. Lucasfilm, 1983.