Truman is the unknowing star of a 24-hour-a-day TV drama that has been aired live around the world for nearly 30 years, since the day Truman was born. Everyone in Truman's home town, including his wife Meryl, is an actor, improvising from a loose scenario devised by the project's creator, Christof. He has created the largest man-made structure in history, which is a huge domed studio called Seahaven, complete with a working town, a roiling sea and hundreds of extras, simply to convince one person that his life is real. In this scheme Truman is the human, the one true man. Everybody and everything else is show. The Truman Show explored various social implications and consequences of putting a human being in a deliberately constructed environment. Therefore, through this structured environment, a philosophical question can be addressed which is how do people perceive reality and how can Truman's reality be compared to Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
The Truman Show begins with the star, Truman Burbank, a mild-mannered insurance salesman that has lived his entire life in a false reality. From the day he was born the actors on the show have been his family and friends, not because they wish to be, but because they are told and paid to be. They come to the set everyday to play roles in the life of a real person. Their job is to pull the proverbial wool over Truman's eyes, so as they can broadcast a true life over the television waves. Even Seahaven, the town in which he lives, is merely constructed to give Truman a sense of reality. All these factors lead us to ask the question, was Truman's reality any less valid because it was created by one man's vision for a television show?.
The Truman Show can be best based from Plato's most famous dialogue, The Republic. Contained in this dialogue are numerous books that describe many of Plato's philosophies, but most specifically the Allegory of the Cave.
