Plato’s allegory depicts prisoners who live in the cave and all they know is the shadows; the manipulated images that puppeteers project on the wall. The prisoners are those who live in a state of ignorance and succumb to the illusion of knowledge by the fire’s projection and the puppeteers’ control. Plato acknowledges that if they were to speak, it would be about the shadows within their limited perspective. Plato’s ideal republic is one where citizens are not ignorant – instead, believing and experiencing something greater. He presents the prisoners as those who live in total ignorance and have not been shown the truth and knowledge. The prisoners’ ignorance is rooted in the lack of truth and knowledge projected to them by the puppeteers; they believe everything to be real and ultimate because they are deluded by the information they receive. Without such information, it is implied that the prisoners are left to their own beliefs without guidance because it is all that they know. In Plato’s republic citizens need guidance for the beliefs they are unaware of in themselves, so a gap is left for Plato’s guide to fill. They lead the prisoners and show them what is distinguished as the place of knowledge and truth; one that is both metaphorically and literally so bright and uncomfortable that this form of *education* becomes painful. The connection to a functioning and healthy republic lies in the paradox of the guide. Though the guide is revealing information to the prisoners who supposedly held it within themselves already, as determined by the word *education*, does the guide become more than a guide for the prisoners – a divine savior of sorts? Leaders/guides/saviors are a connection to a sense of “establishment,” whether that is where truth lies or not – in a spiritual sense, the “establishment” can be identified as a form of divinity. Plato writes of a figure who takes on the ignorance of the people in order to unlock their experience of truth and knowledge outside of the cave. If the guide was human, they would be biased like a prisoner in some way. If the guide was a personal projection, it would contradict the prisoners knowing only what lies in the cave and what is projected on the walls. Thus, the guide must be of a divine/spiritual/metaphysical nature.