Allegory of the Allegory of the Cave; rough draft
This is it so far. It's supposed to be 3-5 pages long and right now it's just over 4. I have no conclusion yet, and I think I need to go back and talk about how Yusuke and co. disillusion some of the Seven from Sensui's doctrine. But I don't think it's the most horrible.
I've got a head cold right now--I can't bitch much; it's the worst I ever usually get--but it still sucks. At least I've discovered that I can will myself from passing out (spent a little too much time under the hot water last night, or this morning technically). Anyway, I didn't go to work or my classes this morning, including World Lit., so no one has seen my draft yet. If anybody would like to take a look-over of what I have so far and give some input, they'd be most welcome to...
Who says cartoons rot the mind? Perhaps the guilty party has a bland mind unwilling to seek out contemporary mediums of knowledge. I have watched many cartoons in my time and from them I have learned many things and/or correlated information with things learnt elsewhere: mythology, religion, governmental conspiracy, chemistry, drugs, music, et cetera. Now I may add (or supplement?) philosophy to the list. I offer an allegory to an Allegory. In the anime Yu Yu Hakusho, the Chapter Black Saga is reminiscent of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. One of the Saga’s themes is disillusionment and truth, and the consequence of an improper ascent to the truth.
In the Allegory of the Cave, the cave itself represents our tangible world, in which people dwell veiled with darkness and its falsehoods. The people do not realize this, and remain content. Plato claims that some may become free of this delusion by ascending from the cave and gazing upon the light of the sun, Plato’s metaphor for truth. While describing this, our philosopher stresses that the ascent is a process with different stages, the sun being the last of them. "Not all in a moment" (1112), Plato says. Do not rush.
Allow me a digression to explain our more modern piece, since some will be unfamiliar with it. Yu Yu Hakusho centers on the adventures of Yusuke Urameshi, a juvenile delinquent who in the first episode dies by throwing himself in front of a car to save a child. The Prince of Death revives him, and he becomes the Spirit World’s errand boy, becoming involved in the affairs of human and apparitions. Often these two groups clash, but Yusuke acquires allies and foes on both sides.
In the Chapter Black Saga, Yusuke and his allies must confront his predecessor, Shinobu Sensui. During Sensui’s career with the Spirit World he harbored a black and white view of the world. Humans are good; protect them. Apparitions are bad; destroy them. No questions asked, and he was content.
At some point Sensui discovers that he has an admirer from afar, Itsuki-an apparition. He proceeds to execute Itsuki, but asks first if the apparition has any final requests. In answer: to live one more day, in order to see the finale of a favorite television series. Coincidentally, the show is Sensui’s favorite as well. Such a human request from a nonhuman amuses him, and he allows Itsuki to live. After this the two work together and begin a relationship. Sensui’s principles adjust slightly to accommodate the notion that a few apparitions are good, like humans.
Plato asserts in the Allegory that the ascent is a process; the one ascending "will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world [reality]" (1112). If the sun represents truth, consider Itsuki as the dawn. But Plato also warns that if a person is forced unprepared into the light, they shall become overwhelmed. Itsuki predicts that Sensui’s black and white mindset will be what breaks him.
One night the pair infiltrate the compound of the Black Black Club, a group of rich and powerful humans who fill their leisure time with outlandish activities. As Sensui bursts through the compound’s doors, he gazes upon a spectacle that scrambles his previous beliefs. Humans, his archetype for goodness and purity, are torturing apparitions and bathing in their blood, for sport. The atrocity contradicts everything that Sensui had thought so violently that he slaughters every human in sight. After this incident he becomes obsessed with an artifact in the Spirit World known as the Chapter Black tape, a document of humankind’s crimes against each other and against apparitions. His mentality does not recover; in time, Sensui, Itsuki, and the tape disappear.
After the ascent, Plato says that the person is obligated to return to the cave and minister the truth to others. But if the person did not properly ascend, their "eyes will be dazzled, and [they] will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities" (1112). What, then, if such a person returns to the world?
By the present time of the Chapter Black Saga, Sensui has gone mad and developed seven personalities to cope. He has also formulated a solution to the conflict spurred by the Black Black Club: humans are corrupt and evil; wipe them out. He gathers to him five human psychics and indoctrinates into them the truth as he has warped it. With these human tools and Itsuki, Sensui founds the Seven, a cult anticipating an apocalypse in which apparitions may roam freely amongst humankind and devour it if they wish. Sensui commands this plot from the site where the apparitions will be released, the Sevend’s headquarters, Demon’s Door Cave. If the sun is truth, then Sensui’s retinas were fried.
Sensui never had the opportunity to adjust to his own violent revelations. He became disoriented like a person in a dark room when suddenly the light flips on. But Yusuke made discoveries of the nature of humans and apparitions bit by bit, a gradual ascent as deemed proper in the Allegory. Toward the Saga’s end it is revelaed that he possesses an apparition ancestor. Itsuki remarks that Sensui’s defeat by a "Mazoku" (even in a show where the hero is first introduced as dead, it’s still practically law that he emerge the winner) was "the cathartic jolt he needed to resolve his inner turmoil and pay off his guilt. He finally conquered those six personalities and emerged as Shinobu, his original, untainted self."