What is the main idea of the passage?

Learning changes what a person can see, and can look like loss to those who have not learned. (The last sentence states it: education can look like damage to those who lack it, which the return scene has just shown.)

In the story, what makes the shadows on the wall?

Carved objects carried along a road in front of a fire. (The text says other people carry carved objects between the fire and the prisoners' backs, and those objects cast the shadows.)

Why do the prisoners believe the freed man has been harmed?

He can no longer judge the shadows as well as they can. (Prizes go to whoever predicts shadows best. Since he now stumbles and misjudges them, he looks worse by their only measure.)

In this passage, ascent means

the act of climbing upward. (He is dragged up into daylight, so the ascent that is painful is the climb out of the cave.)

Shadows On The Wall: Level 4 Reading Comprehension Questions

In the Republic, Plato asks his readers to imagine prisoners who have spent their whole lives chained in a cave, facing a blank wall. Behind them burns a fire, and between the fire and their backs other people carry carved objects along a low road. The prisoners see only the shadows these objects cast on the wall, and because they have never seen anything else, they take the shadows for the whole of reality. They even give prizes to whoever is quickest at predicting which shadow will come next.

Suppose one prisoner is released and dragged up into daylight. The ascent is painful, and his eyes, trained on dimness, are useless at first. Only slowly can he look at the objects themselves, and later at the sun that makes them visible.

The sharp part of the story is the return. When he goes back down to tell the others, his eyes no longer handle the darkness, so he stumbles and misjudges the shadows. To the prisoners, the journey has plainly made him worse at the one skill they respect. Plato's warning is that education can look like damage to those who lack it.

Comprehension questions