The following is the essay I had submitted as part of the one week summer course I took at the Oxford University, where we read Plato’s Republic. The essay includes a few references to structure and specific content from the book, so if something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably because it refers to an “insider” joke.

PS: I’m the guy in the front and in the middle, the one who is wearing a white shirt.
I was sitting at my lunch table, eating bread and ruminating whether it was worth it for me to fly thousands of kilometers from India to Oxford, just to study one book: Plato’s Republic. ...