Plato explains: “Will he not imagine that the shadows he saw before are more real than the objects now shown to him? (1129).” Since the prisoners are unable to see the outside world, they are forced to strictly believe what they can see. Plato describes that prisoners can only be sure of the objects currently seen and not what they have seen before. The prisoners used what Douglass, as Plato used to his advantage what he had learned to learn from the chatter of slave owners. “The moral I took from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder (430).” Self-centered thoughts of thinking about how he will be able to become free have taken over his every thought and consumed him to listen to conversations. Furthermore, Wallace describes self-centered thoughts in which vehicles are always in his way, but he could never be in their way. For example, "In this traffic, all these vehicles are stopped and idling in my way... Or that the Hummer that just cut me off maybe... is trying to take this guy to the hospital, and It's in a bigger room." , more legitimate haste than me: in fact it is I who am on HIS path (7).” Unlike Douglass, Wallace recognized that he was thinking only of himself and not of his surroundings. All of these characters demonstrate that they were self-centered at some point