Because of how we live, true reality is not obvious to most of us. However, we mistake what we see and hear for reality and truth. This is the basic premise for Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which prisoners sit in a cave, chained down, watching images cast on the wall in front of them. They accept these views as reality and they are unable to grasp their overall situation: the cave and images are a deception, a mere shadow show orchestrated for them by unseen men, just as Oedipus does not fathom the truths behind all that lie in front of him.
Oedipus perceives reality through imperfect eyes that are "perplexed and weak" and accepts this distorted illusion of reality without question. Accordingly, to break free, we must open our eyes and see the truth about the world around us according to Plato. The truth for Oedipus being that he is a prisoner of his own beliefs just as the men were prisoners of the cave. Oedipus" reluctance to believe the prophet Teiresias and not consider the words spoken to be the truth had caused Oedipus to be a victim of his own fate.
In "Allegory of the Cave" Plato alludes to a direct representation of the human condition of typical behaviors in society. The allegory metaphorically describes several key elements of the human condition of containing pertinent ideas about false perceptions being perceived instead of the intuition of reason. Oedipus" disposition fits in perfect to Plato's ideas that whoever does not accept their fate for what it is will be pitied such as Oedipus had not accepted his fate of marrying his mother and murdering his father.
In the context of "Allegory of the Cave," Oedipus can be compared to the prisoner who is set free and is forced to see the situation inside the cave just as Oedipus had realized his fate. Initially, one does not want to give up the security of his or her familiar reality, just as Oedipus did not want to give up his life and how far he had come in his life.
