Plato's main conceptual scheme of the cave is that people see reality as the visible world when reality really is not the visible world. This is a quite an interesting concept for several reasons. The most prominent reason is that his scheme can be applied to so many facets of one's life. For example, many people believe the allegory was simply describing the events that led to Socrates' end. That Socrates with his philosophical teachings had tried to lead society out of the cave and show them the light but society felt threatened, so they killed him. Another example, is that the cave represents the uneducated mind, meaning that before we become educated, we are ignorant of the visible world. Therefore the blinding light would be the complete educated mind but as the learning process became easier, it became easier to see the light of the visible world. A modern day case for the scheme of the cave is the obsession with television. Some people make the claim that television has become a cave for many Americans, that people mistake television for the visible world.
Plato's cave is fairly well covered on the internet and in fact some people have put forth what the allegory of the cave means to them. For instance, one person felt like the university had become a cave, because all the people do inside the university is talk about the things that occur outside the university. So when she left the university and went out into the real world, she was mesmerized. But if she were to return to the cave (university) now, there would be no way she could return to the old way of living. So when she tried to give the cave dwellers her new knowledge of the outside world, she was scorned. The internet proves to be a good resource for analogies like this one and it also proves to be a good source for helping people relate to anicent philosophy.