Allegory of the cave essay... please help!?

Question

the instructions for the introduction are...include a brief introduction that leads the reader toward the thesis. My thesis is at the end but i'm wonder if i skip too much at the end?

"Plato, a disciple and student of Socrates, wrote dialogues to try and paint a picture of Socrates’ philosophical views. Everything we know about Socrates beliefs is second-hand. Socrates explored every aspect in life and encouraged his students to do the same. Although Socrates’ students stood firmly by his side many disliked his influence on his students. In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates challenges us to think deeper then many of us ever have. We have to imagine something that seems impossible, a dark cave filled with prisoners who have never seen anything but shadows, and use it as our basis to decide if those prisoners lives are worth living. If one does not question the world around him, then he is not experiencing life to its full potential. "

or does this one sound better

Plato, a disciple and student of Socrates, wrote dialogues to try and paint a picture of Socrates’ philosophical views. Everything we know about Socrates beliefs is second-hand. Socrates explored every aspect in life and encouraged his students to do the same. Although Socrates’ students stood firmly by his side many disliked his influence on his students. In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates challenges us to think deeper then many of us ever have. We have to imagine something that seems impossible, a dark cave filled with prisoners who have never seen anything but shadows, and use it as our basis to decide if those prisoners lives are worth living. Socrates believes they are not. In Socrates opinion only the life examined by reason is a life that is truly fulfilled

Answer 1

I like the first one.

The second one, [I'm guessing] youve tried to reword his quote: "The unexamined life is not worth living". This makes it sound cliched and like you are split minded over what your main focus is.

Answer 2

How old are you?  What grade are you in?  This information will help us to know about what your teacher is looking for.

I'm afraid that I don't see either one of your introductions really leading me to your thesis. Both of them talk about very interesting things about Socrates and Plato, but they don't really talk about the allegory of the cave.  Neither intro has unity, focusing on a single idea and developing it.

A strong introductory paragraph might start from the reader's experience and get her interested in the idea you are going to write about.  Then, your thesis statement is like an unveiling, revealing something exciting that will make them eager to read the rest of your essay.  Here is an example about another philosopher's idea:  Rene Descartes, and his proof of human existence.

We have all had tricks played on us when we have been convinced that something was real that wasn’t.  Our friends showed us a dead finger in a box, but it was just their own finger pushed through a hole in the bottom of the box and painted like it was bloody.  Someone taps you on the wrong shoulder and makes you think that they’re on the other side of you, but they’re not.  The world is full of illusions, and it can be very good to know how to tell the difference between illusions and reality.  Many philosophers, for centuries have tried to figure out how to know what is real and what is not, and this can be a very knotty question.  Imagine, if you were just a brain in a jar in a laboratory, and you had wires connecting you to a computer that was programmed to make you feel what you feel, see what you see, hear what you hear, smell what you smell. How could you tell the difference between the experience of a life that looks perfectly real, and a real life that actually was?  What can we know about anything at all in the world?  How do we even know that we exist at all?  Renee Descarte showed that there is one thing that we can know is true no matter what.  We can always know that we exist, because it is not possible to wonder if we are here, if we aren’t here to be wondering about it!

Do you see how this paragraph is all about the idea that I'm goingn to tell about?  I start from what you know and experience--beeing fooled by people playing tricks on you, and then I show you how this question is important to look at.  Then I lead you to Descartes' answer to the puzzle.  I don't get off target by talking about Descartes, or who he was or other things he talked about.  I just talk about the ideas that are important to my thesis, that help you see that it is important and interesting and worth reading about .

So if you want to really lead us to your questions on life and self-examination, you have to think about why this question might be important to us, what is Socrates saying about the cave and the people in it that help us see that.  Then you want to lead us from our confusion about whether we should examine our life or not to Socrates' idea that we should. That is, you show us the logical reasoning that connects Socrates' observations about how the people in the cave act to the reasonable conclusion that self examination is better than no self-examination.

Does that help?