Due to a fire which is burning in the mouth of the cave, the prisoners are able to see the objects and each other only as distorted, flickering shadows on the cavern wall in front of them. These puppet-handlers are in total control of everything the prisoners think, hear, see, and believe. .
At the end of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave", one prisoner is released out of the cave and imprisonment and into the world outside of the cave. Since the freed man is not familiar with the tangible objects and way of life set before him in this new, real world, his initial reaction is to dismiss these new findings. From birth he was taught by the puppet-handlers to believe the views they presented to him, therefore it is extremely challenging for him to accept the fact that there may be another world outside the cave. Not only is this new concept mentally challenging for him to understand, but it is also physically challenging for him. Sunlight is something the prisoner is unfamiliar with and proves to be harmful when released into this new world. The freed man experiences pain to his eyes at first because he has lived all of his untrue life in a dark underground cave. It takes some time before the freed man in comfortable in this new world and in the sunlight.
The movie The Matrix parallels Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" in a number of ways. Similar to the prisoners of the cave, the humans trapped in the matrix only see what the machines or the modern day puppet-handlers, want them to see. They are tricked into believing that what they hear in the matrix and see before them is the true reality that exists. They accept what their senses are telling them and they believe that what they are experiencing is truly life. Much like the prisoners in the cave, the people in the matrix have only known this one world to be true since birth. The concept of the matrix in the movie is much like Plato's concept of the underground cave in his story.
