The story has its roots in the well known Allegory of the Cave which the Greek philosopher Plato uses to explain how a philosopher, a thinker and a seeker of truth, is like a prisoner, who is freed from the cave of ignorance and comes to understand that the shadows projected on the wall have nothing to do with reality. Enlightened, he has to persuade the others, the prisoners in the underground cave, about what the reality is; not an easy pursuit.