\u201cPlato, Again\u201d focuses on the blatant discrimination of Caroline Moore, and enables the reader to follow Caroline\u2019s experience as a disabled, black woman. Caroline reflects on the social and political aspects of Plato\u2019s work, specifically the \u201cAllegory of the Cave,\u201d in three separate settings, including the outside world, inside a working environment, and inside a doctor\u2019s office. Caroline\u2019s ongoing cancer treatment and resulting side effects give her a perspective that the people operating around her are not aware of, and are to0 ignorant to comprehend. \u201cPlato, Again\u201d reveals through Plato\u2019s allegory how disabled individuals are often cast as static observers, silent and invisible characters that live in the shadows of their own lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Caroline\u2019s experiece of sexual harrasment and disability discrimination, as mentioned on page 52, are prominant ways in which she is made to be an invisible and unheard spectator in a work setting. Eyes are an important thematic element in the entirety of \u201cPlato, Again,\u201d and even more so during Caroline\u2019s work place, as she is the simultaneously the witness, the object of the male gaze, and somebody who is glanced away from entirely. Bill Densk, Caroline\u2019s boss, wrongfully makes Caroline a victim of sexual misconduct and her disability.\u00a0 Bill, a white male in a position of power, asks inappropriate and uncomfortable questions in regards to Caroline\u2019s mastectomy scars, stares directly where her disability is physically<\/em> visible, and even touches in the place where her breast used to be before her surgery took place. Bill already has trouble correlating the fact that Caroline can be a woman of color and<\/strong> an intelligent, capable individual with a background in computer science and literature.\u00a0 It is not computable, and not worth understanding to Bill that Caroline can be an intellectual, disabled, woman of color in a work space. This makes her an object to him, one that he can and will eventually replace, as we see through the stages of Caroline\u2019s demotion throughout her cancer treatment. Caroline is unseen <\/em>in a work setting through the eyes of her coworkers. As stated on page 54, people are in a hurry to get past Caroline. A form of disability discrimination can be ignorance or the dismision of disability, whether physical on non-physical. By people choosing to glance away from Caroline, or pretend like they have another task at hand, they are not recognizing her a whole, authentic, human being, worthy of their line of sight. Nobody takes the time to see Caroline deeper the surface level, she is only ever seen sexually, in a pitiful manner, or glanced away from.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAbove and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. I see.\u201d (\u201cAllegory of the Cave\u201d)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Caroline Moore in neither outside of Plato\u2019s cave, nor chained inside, instead she represents the speaker of this allegory, aware of the dangerous yet freeing implications of this allegory, due to her view of the world through a disabled lens.\u00a0 The reader first learns that is Caroline watching people play in a college town, dancing figures outside of the cave, oblivious to the Truth, to her Truth<\/em>. On page 52, she connects watching two college boys interact with one another to watching a home video. Here, she is a narrator, critically analyzing important details in a story that have yet to be discovered by other characters. In Caroline\u2019s work and hospital setting, she is describing the inside of the cave, as the speaker would. People are chained to the wall, watching the puppets move around them. They have not attempted, nor chosen, to see the Truth, her Truth, so they remain in the dark.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Symbolically, Caroline relates herself to bird, either being a prodded nest (pg. 53), or a caught bird (pg. 55), this usage of the bird, can be representative of feminity, fragility, and most significantly, freedom. However, this correlates to Plato\u2019s description of unattainable freedom in \u201cAllegory of the Cave.\u201d \u201cPlato, Again,\u201d ends as Caroline is watching female coworkers, \u201cstanding back from the mouth of the cave\u201d (pg. 56). Which, yet again, represents her recognition as of the world outside and inside of the cave, and a freedom forever lost on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This short story is a step towards recognition, firstly, because Kuusisto is attempting to create an empathetic space, rather than just sympathetic understanding from the reader through the discrimination Caroline is continuously faced with.\u00a0 The author also opens a door for awareness through introducing disability through a familiar, and though provoking concept. Plato\u2019s philosophical ideas were ultimately ignored and berated, his words and very existence were invisible to the people he preached to. His brilliance, dismissed, until he became nothing but background noise (Plato\u2019s \u201cAllegory of the Cave\u201d \u2013 Alex Gendler<\/em>). Caroline\u2019s character is a parallel to Plato\u2019s own being, as she is not seen as an able, disabled individual. This is made evident through Kuusisto\u2019s writing, and therefore reveals how disabled individuals are more often than not, cast as static characters in their own lives, but aware of Truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Word Count:\u00a0871 I pledge: Alyssa Brown<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cPlato, Again\u201d focuses on the blatant discrimination of Caroline Moore, and enables the reader to follow Caroline\u2019s experience as a disabled, black woman. Caroline reflects on the social and political aspects of Plato\u2019s work, specifically the \u201cAllegory of the Cave,\u201d in three separate settings, including the outside world, inside a working environment, and inside a … Continue reading “Alyssa\u2019s Response to Stephen Kuusisto\u2019s \u201cPlato, Again\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcJhts-u9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1869"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1875,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1869\/revisions\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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