When Raoul, Clerici's Fascist secret contact, assigned him the Quadris' murders and passed him a firearm, he ran around playing cops and robbers with the weapon. Raoul quickly denounced him, instead suggesting that the assassination must be decisive and quick. However, Clerici ignored these words and chose to act out his childish fantasy, failing to realize the foolishness of his display until he realized that he his hat had fallen off and been left at Raoul's meeting place. Clearly, Clerici was over-compensating for the shortcomings he had faced during his youth. Just like the prisoners in the cave, in Socrates' allegory of the cave, Clerici was uneducated and gullible enough to be influenced by the shadows, or veil of what was considered normal (definitely not child abuse or homosexuality), presented by the puppeteers.
Over the course of the movie, it became apparent that Clerici's next cause of failure entailed the motivation of his actions by other peoples' norms. The most obvious example of this was his marriage to Guilia. He proposed to her not because he loved her, but because he wanted to fit in; he did not want to live his life married to her, but thought it would be the most normal, as dictated by societal standards, to do so. Another flashback revealed Italo, Clerici's fellow Fascist and good friend, inquiring as to Clerici's engagement. Clerici justified his proposal to Italo, saying, "I don't know. The impression of normalcy. Stability, security. In the morning when I'm dressing, I see myself. And compared to everyone else, I feel different." In another scene, a priest informed Clerici that normalcy necessitated matrimony, a wife, and a family, to which Clerici responded, "That's what I found. I'm going to build a life that's normal. I'm marrying a petty bourgeois. Mediocre. A mound of petty ideas. Full of petty ambitions. She's all bed and kitchen. Normality." Clerici fails to see the true nature of marriage, nevertheless of marrying Guilia; like the cave's prisoners, he has been exposed to reality and presented the chance to experience for himself things' real natures, but fails to do so.