WCU - Spring 2005 Allegory

~~ Allegory ~~

From INFOPLEASE Encyclopedia:

ALLEGORY: in literature, a symbolic story that serves as a disguised representation for meanings other than those indicated on the surface. The characters in an allegory often have no individual personality, but are embodiments of moral qualities and other abstractions. The allegory is closely related to the parable, fable, and metaphor, differing from them largely in intricacy and length. A great variety of literary forms have been used for allegories. The medieval morality play Everyman, personifying such abstractions as Fellowship and Good Deeds, recounts the death journey of Everyman. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a prose narrative, is an allegory of man's spiritual salvation. Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene, besides being a chivalric romance, is a commentary on morals and manners in 16th-century England as well as a national epic. Although allegory is still used by some authors, most notably, George Orwell, in Animal Farm, its popularity as a literary form has declined in favor of a more personal form of symbolic expression (see symbolists).

Any type of fiction that has multiple levels of meaning can be called an allegory.

One familiar kind of allegory is the fable, which has two levels of meaning. On the surface the story will usually be about animals, and it will usually employ the device called "personification," which attributes human characteristics to non-human subjects. In an allegory it's possible to jump to another level of meaning in which the animals represent specific people or specific concepts or doctrines. The way the animals interact and the way the plot unfolds says something about the nature of people or the value of ideas.

Fables aren't always for children, though it's a form we associate closely with children's stories. We all remember Aesops Fables, the ancient Greek collection of tales that never seem to grow old. The Spencer Holst story "The Zebra Storyteller" is in the tradition of Aesops Fables, though it might not be entirely comprehensible to children. A more well known book like George Orwell's Animal Farm similarly creates an imaginary world of fable for adults that is strongly allegorical, achieving an excellent balance between levels of meaning. On the literal level, readers can be moved by the animals themselves. When Boxer is taken away by the horse slaughterer, for instance, it doesn matter much what he "represents," we feel bad for him in any case. Reading the story on the symbolic level adds to its meaning. On this symbolic level, we're in the presence of Orwell's scathing critique of Soviet Russia.

There's a third level of meaning, as well. Maybe the pigs don't have to specifically represent Soviet leaders. Perhaps we read them as symbolic of tyranny in general. Orwell's depiction of them need not be limited to the historical characteristics of actual people; they may be symbolic of corrupt power in general.