Plato put forward a famous "metaphor of cave" in the Republic as a reflection of the reality and essence of the human world. Under the unique construction of Jos é salamargo, the Enlightenment of metaphor not only artistically interprets Plato's famous proposition, but also unfolds the road of self salvation of ordinary people from blinding to awakening through the narrative of strong story and philosophy in daily conflicts through the experience of the ceramist sipriano algo's family.
Cipriano Arg, the potter in the novel cave, is told by the center that the center has made a decision to terminate the supply contract with itself. In commercial activities, similar decisions are common and heartless, but they are full of unilateral hypocrisy and fraud. Salamargo restrained the sharpness of his writing, and told the truth of commercial activities in a tone of disgust We have to put forward some theories for the market, but these theories can only remove difficulties when the commercial reality can not run according to our plan, and even can be used to exonerate responsibility if necessary. " This is the speech of the head of the central purchasing department, which implies the means of artificially manipulating the market. The revelation of commercial activities in the novel is the forerunner of the interpretation of philosophical proposition. Salamargo uses the card game as a metaphor and points out that the rules of the game set by the department head are just like a card game without fairness. "In this card game, all cards are issued to only one party", and the licensee can decide the color and size at will. This allows the puppet's thread to be held in the hands of the licensees all the time, while sipriano Arg has neither a card nor a clear understanding of the nature of things. Because of the lack of specific market barriers, alciano is in no position to control the nature of its business activities.
As the son-in-law of Cipriano Arg, Masar Gaxo works as a secondary security guard in the center. The motivation of his hard work comes from his expectation of promotion. Only when he becomes the permanent security guard of the center can he move to the center with his family. At that time, Cipriano Arg was about to end his career as a potter and go to the center for the rest of his life. "Reality", or some kind of essence, has become an unsolvable mystery for the life of Cipriano algo.
Sipriano arg is not a man with a high level of education. Since his ancestors, the args have been working in front of the kiln and dealing with clay all day. At the age of sixty-four, Cipriano Arg began to seek the product turn because of the sentence of the head of the central purchasing department: "the disastrous situation of the traditional market is very unfavorable for the goods that can not stand the test of time and people's taste changes". This shift benefited from Marta's proposal. Instead of making pottery utensils, she turned to making pottery figurines. The thread was still in the hands of the licensees. The head of the purchasing department made an order for products. Driven by the order quantity of 1200 pottery figurines, Cipriano Arg regained his vitality in the past.
There is a pain in the vitality that is hard to hide. Salamargo expresses in detail the squeezing and swallowing of traditional handicraftsmen by modern commercial activities in ceremonial language. "Squeeze" has a spatial level of coercion, "swallow" is in line with the rules of the game of ruthlessness. The specific plot of the novel opens a symbolic scene with strong ritual, in which the ceramic vessels discarded by Cipriano Arg and returned to the center. Sipriano Arg found a hole by the river. "Instead of throwing all those pots and pans down into the Kang hole, he took great efforts to carry them down the slope and down the slope in his arms, so that they would not fall to pieces." in the process of going up and down the slope, the hidden pain of the potter's heart gradually bid farewell to the past, and also for the individual in the future The awakening of time laid a psychological foundation for exploration and self-examination. The pressure felt by the potter when he abandoned his own products witnessed the fact that commercial activities were not based on his own will. He could not see the market trend. Under the guidance of the licensee, he made the decision to "adapt" to the market like a puppet. Salamargo uses symbolic rituals to contain bitterness and regret for the passing of tradition, while his inner critical power keeps the author's unique style as always.
Like the dog named Fude in the book, the terracotta Figurine symbolizes the beginning of life in time. Pottery figurines are the source of new vitality for potters after experiencing the pains of product transformation. Although this stray dog was really valued in the family of Cipriano Arg, it made the simple feelings of ordinary people weave lines of praise for the calm narration from the perspective of stray dogs. It is the author's ingenuity to set up the plot and "characters" in this way. Salamargo injected the brilliance of human nature into Fude by personification. Facing the spiritual level of traditional handicraftsmen under the impact of business, Fude, as a memory and mark of the old days, gave sipriano algo sincere comfort. With regaining together, Cipriano Arg maintains the ability of "seeing", which is the ability that does not degenerate in the face of the reality of commercial shock. It makes the potters finally see the idea of good, and then discover the real rational world.
The rational world is hidden in the trivialities of reality. In the cave, the production process of pottery figurines indicates that reality is the image of a thousand people in the world. Because of the quantity of pottery figurines ordered, it is difficult for the Potter and his daughter to make them one by one by hand within the delivery time, so they have to rely on the help of molds. When the pottery figurines are fired in batches, the perfect appearance of thousands of people confirms the craftsmanship of pottery. At the same time, it also makes the meaning of "real object" in the proposition of cave metaphor ambiguous. If the amount of damage is taken into account, the defective products in the successful pottery figurines are metaphors of the real world. The appearance of a thousand people's faces is the product of the inverted model, and "perfect" is always suspected to be false, while the defective products with different shapes awaken the reality after "seeing" the knowable world. Salamago interprets philosophical propositions in literary writing, and guides readers to seek a rational way to get rid of Plato's cave and go straight to the idea of good through daily conflicts, personal experiences, dreams and other ways in the story.
At the end of the novel, the road of reason is presented in detail through the potter's exploration of the mystery of everyday life. Sales of terracotta figurines have declined, and no one recognizes them. In this statement from the head of the central purchasing department, Cipriano Arg accepted the overall "failure" of the pottery industry. With the promotion of Masar Gaxiu, the potters left the countryside, moved to the center, and began to live the life of "city people" in the popular sense. In the center, Cipriano Arg's eyes are busy. Through this busy sight, the center gradually shows its original appearance.
The center is a huge building. It may be a city in the city, but it has a plan to expand to the surrounding area. There are all kinds of shops in the center, full of a wide range of goods, but Marcel Garcia kindly reminds his father-in-law that if you stroll among those goods empty handed, you will attract the attention of the security guard. Salamargo implicitly points out that behind the false prosperity of commercial society is the contempt and hostility to the small individuals. The falsehood of the center is all kinds of interesting facilities in the sight of the potters. If those facilities are listed, "even if you have 80 years of leisure, you can't get such a complex name into it. Even if you were born in the center, it's not enough to go to the outside world all your life." Salamargo puts the center and the outside world at opposite poles with slightly exaggerated description. One can create a "natural feeling", and the other is the nature with different scenery in four seasons.
"The feeling of nature" in the experience of sipriano Arg's spending money on tickets is nothing more than the artificially created natural disasters such as typhoons, rain and snow. This kind of experience can make people who have never gone out of the center addicted, but let the potters tell their false side. The frankness of the potter attracts the disdain of other frequent visitors, just like the prisoner who happens to be released from the cave metaphor, goes out of the cave to see the real world, turns around to tell his companions who are still in the cave, and tries to let his companions go out of the cave with him, but is rejected by his companions who are dominated by experience.
Salamargo uses "things invented by human beings" to refer to the prosperity of science and technology. In the face of nature made by science and technology, education deviates from the direction of tempering truth. People who have never left the center are willing to buy tickets to experience and recognize the "feeling of nature", and they are addicted to it. This kind of deception comes from the center's propaganda, which "stay at home" and "let everything be at hand". Propaganda replaces education, by which the center creates thousands of perfect living pottery figurines.
Compared with the "perfection" of the living pottery figurines, as a defective product, sipriano Arg uses his ability to "see" the knowable world to explore the central daily mystery, and realizes the comprehensive recovery of personal will by revealing the answer. At this moment of awakening, salamago spared no effort to express his passion, and logically cited the mapping of philosophy to the real world through the potter's exploration of the central underground cave. After the underground excavation of the center, a mysterious cave was discovered. Sipriano Arg went to explore alone. The adventures in the cave linked the concepts of complicated time and ancient history, which were closely related to the human past. Time and history have been deposited and evolved in the process of human civilization. As the collective memory of human beings, it should be a heavy "real thing". However, in the center of commerce oriented and technological prosperity, the crystallization of the past civilization has become a well decorated tourist facility, attracting people's patronage with the slogan of "unique scenery, unique in the world". After examining the scenery in the cave, sipriano Arg realized that the man who was tied to the stone bench in the cave was "ourselves". With the ability of the potter to "see", salamargo points out the theme of the story and the enlightenment the story should give the readers.
Plato's cave, a famous philosophical proposition. What people in the cave can see under the confinement is only the shadow reflected on the stone wall, and the shadow is also something that can be manipulated. The manipulator, like a puppet, dominates the speech and behavior of the shadow, so that it can be used as an experience to shackle the prisoners' cognition of the visible world in the cave. Some of the prisoners have released their shackles and come out of the cave. They see the reality different from what they see in the cave. Under the guidance of the sun, they have the ability to discriminate between the real things and images, that is, the ability to "see". They will inevitably follow their own sacred observation and follow the idea of good and embark on a rational road.
Cipriano Arg solved the daily mystery of the center. Driven by the full recovery of individual will, the potters made the decision to leave the center. "I don't want to be tied to a stone bench for the rest of my life and stare at a wall every day." Once upon a time, the image of the potter in his dream was reflected on that wall. The image of his son-in-law, Masar Gaxo, tells the potter that he has been promoted to permanent security, and that he is going to prepare for the whole family to move to the center. The image of the head of the center's purchasing department told Cipriano Arg that the center had cancelled the order for the pottery figurines. The warning of the dream coincides with the metaphor of the cave, from which we can see the unique idea of salamargo. In sipriano Arg's personal experience, the promotion of his son-in-law and the cancellation of orders are all shadows on the stone wall, which are illusions in the visible world. By exploring the mysteries of everyday life, the potters "see" the truth of the world. The devastating impact of Commerce and technology on the traditional economy makes the center a huge beast that is expanding anytime, anywhere and devouring everything around it. The living terracotta figures made by this giant beast and attached to it, confuse the line between the true and the false in the deception, just like the prisoners imprisoned in the cave, clinging to the existing experience and forever tied to the stone bench.
Sipriano Arg walked out of the cave with the reason of recovery. After three weeks in the apartment in the center, the potter didn't see the sun for three weeks. Now, sipriano arg is on the journey of not knowing where the destination is. Together with his family, he "sees" the light of the knowable world. "Light" in Plato's proposition is the rational idea of good, and in salamargo's works is the exploration of the essence of life after human awakening.