This one developed from a sketch in my sketchbook, which is why it's important to keep a sketchbook. If I'm stumped for something to make a print of, the first thing I do is flip through my sketchbook to see if there's anything that I can develop further. In this case, it dovetailed nicely with something from Plato's “The Republic,” also called “The Allegory of the Cave.” In case you haven't ever read that (or haven't taken a basic philosophy course in a while), the gist of the piece is about not being able to empirically trust one's senses as a basis for determining much of anything. Plato paints a situation where people are in a cave, watching flickering shadows from outside the cave. Since they've never seen beyond the cave (or aren't even aware of the existence of an “outside”), they accept this by-product of a larger existence as being the entirety of their world. To put it shortly, it's a matter of not seeing what's around you because of being pointed in the wrong direction. 

For some reason, that bit stuck with me, and this print is the result. Of course, it's not a literal cave that the people are in, but in the sense that living through what someone else tells you instead of turning around and investigating things for yourself every now and then, a mouth is a suitable metaphor for a cave. 

c.