system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
The FIRE in the Alegory of the Cave

I never undestood why there's a fire to cast shadows on the wall.

Some people are using puppets to cast shadows in the wall with a fire behind them. So the shadows represents the material world, what we can see with our senses.

Then the prisioner gets free and go outside where he can see the real world, the ideal forms.

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What do the fire represents here? and the puppets? why does the prisoner get past the fire and the puppets as if there were nothing in between the back of the cave and the world? Why do we need a fire for the alegory to work and not just shadows coming from the sun an real people casted on back of the cave?

It looks like the shadows are imitations of the imitations of the ideal forms. But I don't think that's the most usual interpretations...
gpt
The sun is the form of the Good, which illuminates all the other forms. If the sun illuminated the puppets then it would seem like there was truth to be found in appearances and the material world. Plato tries to avoid this at all costs - he wants to show you how something can resemble truth but be totally cut off from it. Hence, the fire - it does something very similar to the truth, but it is totally separate from it.