The
part that I want to focus on is when John, after hearing that Rhoda submitted
an essay to go to Earth II, told Rhoda Plato’s anecdote of people in the cave.
He said that when the man who saw the outside world came back and told the
other men what he has seen, he was stoned to death. This story relates the two
character’s attitude towards truth. Rhoda, who sympathizes for the man who has
seen the real world, is an advocate of truth. She is willing to pursue the
unknown, and came to John’s house to reveal something that might get her hurt.
John
symbolically represents the men who would kill the man who tells the truth. He
is sheltered from the perpetrator of the accident because of the coma and he is
not ready to know that Rhoda, a girl he falls for, is the person that killed
all his family. Like the men who violently react to the man who sees the real
world, John almost chokes Rhoda to death when he realizes that she is the “stupid
teenager” that caused the accident. John says “maybe they are not ready to know
the truth;” he certainly is not. When John accepts the ticket to the other
Earth, I think it symbolically represents him finally accepting all the truth
of the night of the accident, not being left in the dark any longer. As John
argues it is a stupid idea to go to the other Earth because people are not
ready for the truth, by agreeing to go to the place that represents “the real
world” in Plato’s anecdote, John is telling that he is ready to accept everything.
The
fact that he went to the other Earth instead of Rhoda makes him the advocate
for truth, and maybe the ending could also be interpreted as the other John,
like the other people on the cave, not ready for the truth therefore not coming
to earth even when he was offered.
