2 The extended definition of allegory

THEME: Allegory as a technique for expanding the meaning


CONTENT
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................2
1. The extended definition of allegory................................................4
2. Allegory as a literary device for expanding the meaning.............10
3. Types of allergies in writing..........................................................18
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................25
REFERENCES.....................................................................................28

Introduction
English is regarded as one of the most spoken languages over the world. In seventy countries English has an official status as a first or second language. Its influence has reached further distances. Today, the interest in learning foreign languages is growing in our country. The study of foreign languages is of great importance in strengthening international relations and diplomatic relations. The role of linguistic in the process of language learning is unique. Through literary texts it is possible to study not only the language, but also the culture of other countries. As Shavkat Mirziyoyev said: Today we are laying the foundation for a new era of development in Uzbekistan. In this process, our closest assistants are teachers and mentors, scientific and creative intelligentsia. In his works named New Uzbekistan with a great future he reclaimed: If we fail to change the learning methodology in schools, neither will the quality of education transform.
On May 6, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev chaired a meeting on measures to improve the system of teaching foreign languages. Several areas of knowledge are determined every year in Uzbekistan, the development of which is given priority attention. This year physics and foreign languages have become such areas.“The time has come to create in Uzbekistan a new system of teaching foreign languages, which will become a solid foundation for the future. Since we set ourselves the goal of building a competitive state, from now on, graduates of schools, lyceums, colleges and universities must be fluent in at least two foreign languages. This strict requirement should become the main criterion for the work of the head of each education institution, Shavkat Mirziyoyev said. It was noted that an Agency for the Promotion of Learning Foreign Languages will be created under the Cabinet of Ministers.
The actuality of my course paper is "Allegory as a technique for expanding the meaning". The research is to define the role of the difference of allegory in early periods. Furthmore, the course paper gives complete information about difference of allegory and including its types and methods.
The aim of the course paper is the thorough analysis of the allegory as a techniques expanding the meaning in literature.
The theoretical significance of the work is devoted information about definition of allegory: what does it mean?, importance and benefits of it for teaching students.
The practical value of the course paper is about how to learn it in lessons and giving thorough data about specific features of allegory in different ages with its phases and typology.
The sources of the course paper are scientific books and journals, which consist of related articles. Moreover, adequate information comes from several internet resources.
The structure of the course paper consists of introduction, main body, involving two and three sub parts, the conclusion, bibliography.
Conclusion of the course paper gives overall idea with all information which were provided.
Bibliography gives references of the course paper.

1. The extended definition of allegory

As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-) hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts. Northrop Frye discussed what he termed a "continuum of allegory", a spectrum that ranges from what he termed the "naive allegory" of the likes of The Faerie Queene, to the more private allegories of modern paradox literature.[8] In this perspective, the characters in a "naive" allegory are not fully three-dimensional, for each aspect of their individual personalities and of the events that befall them embodies some moral quality or other abstraction; the author has selected the allegory first, and the details merely flesh it out.
Since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. Examples of allegory in popular culture that may or may not have been intended include the works of Bertolt Brecht, and even some works of science fiction and fantasy, such as The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newton's head is another famous allegory. It simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale. While allegoresis may make discovery of allegory in any work, not every resonant work of modern fiction is allegorical, and some are clearly not intended to be viewed this way. According to Henry Littlefield's 1964 article, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, may be readily understood as a plot-driven fantasy narrative in an extended fable with talking animals and broadly sketched characters, intended to discuss the politics of the time. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that "A fairy tale is not an allegory."¹
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is another example of a well-known work mistakenly perceived as allegorical, as the author himself once stated, "...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author." Tolkien specifically resented the suggestion that the book's One Ring, which gives overwhelming power to those possessing it, was intended as an allegory of nuclear weapons. He noted that, had that been his intention, the book would not have ended with the Ring being destroyed but rather with an arms race in which various powers would try to obtain such a Ring for themselves. Then Tolkien went on to outline an alternative plot for "Lord of The Rings", as it would have been written had such an allegory been intended, and which would have made the book into a dystopia. While all this does not mean Tolkien's works may not be treated as having allegorical themes, especially when reinterpreted through postmodern sensibilities, it at least suggests that none were conscious in his writings. This further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention.²
An allegory is a narrative story that conveys a complex, abstract, or difficult message. It achieves this through storytelling. Rather than having to explain the pitfalls of arrogance and the virtues of persistence, a writer can instead tell a tale about a talking tortoise and a haughty hare. Humans naturally gravitate toward good stories. Have you ever noticed how fiction gets the most shelf space in the bookstore? Stories are compelling. By using a story to talk about big, abstract, or difficult ideas, allegory takes advantage of our inclination toward story. Sometimes, the message a writer wants to convey is dangerous to talk about explicitly. In these cases, allegory creates distance between the writer and the message. One famous example of this is George Orwell’s 1945 novel Animal Farm. Orwell used a story line about farm animals to express his dissent toward the Russian government, a risky subject to discuss outright. Allegories are one of many literary devices that writers can use to show one thing and say another. In this way, they are similar to but not the same as:
Metaphors: The length of a piece of writing is the easiest way to tell if you’re reading allegory vs. metaphor. A metaphor is a brief literary device that assigns one thing to another. An allegory is an entire story, complete with characters and narrative arc.
Symbols: Like metaphor, symbols are typically singular. One thing represents a concept or idea. Technically, an allegory is an expanded work of symbolism and employs various symbols throughout its story.
Allusions: Allusion is a reference to a well-known person, character, place, or event that the writer uses to pack a lot of meaning into a small space. If an allegory is widely known, it might be referenced as an allusion in a piece of writing.
Fables: The term fable is often used as a synonym for allegory. The two terms overlap, but they’re not completely interchangeable. Allegory is the broader of the two terms. It encompasses fables, which are short-form allegories that use animals or nonhuman characters to teach a specific lesson.
Anecdotes: Similar to allegory, anecdotes have a complete narrative structure. They are short stories told to make a point. The difference is that anecdotes are true stories used to exemplify a specific message, whereas allegories are mostly fictional tales that convey broader meanings.
Allegory gives the writer a chance to be creative while conveying an important message. It isn’t speech writing, and it isn’t science class. With allegory, you can employ personification, time travel, even magic if that suits your story. You have space to create more complex characters using techniques like indirect characterization. The important thing is that the story stands on its own and the underlying message is clear. Effective allegory does not require explanation. Though sometimes, like with The Tortoise and the Hare, the story begs for a schoolteacher’s voice to enter at the end and say: “The moral of the story is . . . ” Yet even without a schoolteacher chiming in, we still understand the point of the story. Allegory is most commonly sorted by the tradition it emerges from: biblical, classical, or modern. Sometimes you’ll see it divided by the literary device it employs, such as personification allegory or symbolic allegory.³
Biblical: Biblical allegory can refer to stories within the Bible that teach specific lessons or to literature that retells lessons from the Bible. These usually appear as tales of good vs. evil.
Classical: Classical allegories are stories that emerged from the classical period of ancient Greece and Rome. Many of these allegories, such as Aesop’s Fables, originated as oral stories that were later transcribed.
Modern: Allegory is a powerful way to hold a reader’s attention, and it continues to be employed by writers to address modern concerns. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, from 1850, is an allegory about self-reliance and the threat of American conformity. Some scholars have read L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, first published in 1900, as an allegory about the social and political concerns of Americans at the turn of the twentieth century.
Personification: Personification allegory is a simple story in which the characters transparently represent concepts or types.
Symbolic: In symbolic allegory, the characters have an autonomous narrative outside of the messages they convey. The character Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy, from 1320, is a symbolic allegorical figure because he represents both the historical author of the Aeneid and the human faculty of reason.
Allegories heavily rely on symbolism to embed an underlying meaning. But again, allegory is not a symbol. It’s a story that stitches many symbols together to point at a deeper or more complex message. For example, think about a flag. A flag is a symbol of a country. Flying a flag in one’s yard is a way to demonstrate pride in that country through the use of a symbol. A more complex message might discuss the way that national pride is a positive quality insofar as it unifies people around certain ideals but also how a threshold exists beyond which national pride can become dangerous and exclusionary. This message is much more nuanced and requires more elements than a front yard and a flagpole. This message could form the foundation of an allegory. Allegory is found in many different art forms, but we’ll focus on examples of famous allegories in literature and philosophy. One of the most famous examples of allegory is Animal Farm, by George Orwell. On its surface, Animal Farm is a story about farm animals that rebel against their farmer. The underlying story, however, concerns Orwell’s disillusionment with the Bolshevik Revolution and is an indictment of the Russian government. Aesop’s Fables is a collection of short stories that use animal characters to teach children lessons about how to behave in society. Some of Aesop’s most famous fables are The Fox and the Hedgehog, The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs, and of course, The Tortoise and the Hare. Each story is an individual allegory.⁴
Philosophy often explores complex, abstract ideas, so it is rife with examples of allegory. Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave is an example of classical allegory. Plato’s allegory tells a story about a group of people who spend their lives in a cave, generating their understanding of the outside world based on the shadows they see on the cave’s walls. The underlying message is about the limits of human understanding. Sometimes modern works of fiction are read as allegory whether or not that was intended by the author. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954–1955, has been read by scholars as both a biblical allegory exploring themes of good and evil and as a modern allegory commenting on World War I. Tolkien denies both interpretations, however. The reading of a text as allegory, regardless of its intention, is called “allegoresis.” S. Lewis’s series The Chronicles of Narnia, from 1950 to 1956, has also often been cited as a work of biblical allegory, with Aslan representing a Christ character. That said, Lewis has rejected this classification on technical grounds. While he does acknowledge the biblical symbolism in the story, he does not think that it maps neatly enough onto the Bible to consider it a full-blown allegory. Allegory works by giving characters and events in the story symbolic meanings. As readers, our attention remains on the surface story while a symbolic story plays out beneath.
When divided by tradition, allegories are either biblical, classical, or modern. When divided by literary device, allegories are personification allegories or symbolic allegories. An allegory is the rhetorical strategy of extending a metaphor through an entire narrative. Thus, it's a longer description, illustration, analogy, or comparison than a simile or a metaphor would be. In an allegory, any objects, persons, and actions in the text are a part of that large metaphor and equate to meanings that lie outside the text. Allegories contain a lot of symbolism. Allegories are extended metaphors throughout a text, making every character, scene, and symbol part of a larger whole.

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  Symbolism is key in allegories; the stories are rich with symbols supporting the larger message.
  
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  Allegories in a parable can serve as teaching tools about spiritual concepts.
  
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  For an author, using the literary device of an allegory can present his or her views on a large topic or theme in a less didactic way than just spelling them out.
  

The use of the allegorical literary form extends back to ancient times and the oral tradition, even before stories started being written down. One of the most famous allegories in English is John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" (1678), a tale of Christian salvation (the lead character is even named Christian, so there's no real mystery as to what the story is about). The technique is also known as inversio, permutatio, and false semblant. The word's etymology comes from the Greek word allegoria, which means, "description of one thing under the image of another." Its adjective form is allegorical. In the "Allegory of the Cave," Plato describes the difference between enlightened people and those who don't see true reality, in "The Republic." He portrays the unenlightened as those chained up in a cave watching shadows, "like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets," unaware that what they see in front of them isn't how the world really is. They know nothing of so many other aspects in the world, not even grass or sky. George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' George Orwell's famous allegorical novel "Animal Farm" (that has even been portrayed as a cartoon) is on the surface about a farm, with the animals as characters. On a deeper level, the plot and characters represent the rise of the Communist Party in Russia in the early 20th century. The story's events correlate with historical events. It could also be seen as a commentary on how totalitarianism arises in a more general sense too. "One problem with allegories is, in fact, the difficulty of determining what counts as source and what as target. For instance, Animal Farm is a text about a farm, which may be taken as an explicit model for thinking about a more abstract, implicit target that has to do with totalitarian politics. Or is ​Animal Farm a text about a farm which, as an explicit target, is structured by our knowledge of a prior cultural text about totalitarian politics which acts as an implicit source?...It is precisely one of the distinguishing characteristics of allegory that the direction of the relation between the domains may be read in two ways." (Gerard Steen, "Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage: A Methodological Analysis of Theory and Research." John Benjamins, 2007)⁵
Literary forms that are related to allegory include fables and parables. Fables often use animals to tell a story that teaches a lesson or make a commentary on a larger concept (such as people's behavior). For example, in the Aesop fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper," the grasshopper learns a lesson about thinking ahead and working hard, like the busy ants who've stored up food, while the grasshopper has none come fall because he just played music all summer. "The Tortoise and the Hare" contains several lessons about life: Through persistence and determination, you can do things you didn't know you were capable of. You should never underestimate the underdogs or your opponent. Don't get overconfident in your skills or lazy—or take those skills for granted. Parables also are teaching tools, though the characters are people. The Christian Bible is full of them in the New Testament, where Jesus uses the form to teach people about abstract spiritual concepts. For example, the story of the prodigal son can be seen as an allegory for the message that God forgives people's sins when they turn to him. In "The Wizard of Oz," the lion is an allegory of cowardice and the scarecrow for acting without thinking, for example. "The Seventh Seal" is an allegory about faith, doubt, and death. About "Avatar," "Entertainment Weekly" writer Owen Gleiberman noted, "There are obvious layers of allegory. The Pandora woods is a lot like the Amazon rainforest (the movie stops in its tracks for a heavy ecological speech or two), and the attempt to get the Na'vi to 'cooperate' carries overtones of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan" (Dec. 30, 2009).⁶
In "The Lord of the Flies," the two main characters represent the conflict between civilization and savagery and asks the question through the work as to whether people are innately good or evil—what is our default as human beings? An allegory (AL-lih-gore-ee) is a story that has a hidden moral or political message. The characters and plot often symbolize real-life people, events, and ideas, but the comparison isn’t explicitly stated. Allegory comes from the Latin allegoria, which means “speaking to infer something different.” There are many varieties of allegory, but most fall under these two categories: historical and conceptual. Allegories of this category use symbols to represent historical figures or events to obscure the subject of the written work or help explain and simplify an event so readers can better understand it. A great example is Animal Farm by George Orwell. This story uses farm animals to symbolize different figures from the Russian Revolution. This way, Orwell was able to give his opinions on the event without explicitly stating them and creating problems for himself in the real world.
These allegories include stories with a spiritual or moral meaning rather than an allusion to a real-life event. Examples include biblical parables, poems, and religious morals. C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe falls under this category, as it parallels Jesus dying on the cross with Aslan the lion dying by the White Witch’s hand. The story has many symbols, including Edmund as Judas and the White Witch as the devil, and overall, it teaches kindness, bravery, and the importance of fighting against evil. Allegories can also be a single aspect of a story rather than its whole point. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione uses a book called The Tales of Beetle the Bard to determine what the three Deathly Hallows are. They’re revealed in one of the stories, “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” in which a figure represents death, and three brothers each represent power, love, and humility. Allegories are a useful device for two reasons: sensitivity and clarity. Writers use allegories to distance themselves from subject matter that may be touchy or dangerous to speak of frankly. Instead of approaching the topic directly, they allude to it through the guise of a storied metaphor, which makes it easier and safer to discuss.
Additionally, allegories can aid understanding if the concept being conveyed is too abstract. The symbolism used in the story can give readers a concrete character to latch onto that might represent a conceptual idea in an understandable way. An allegory is a complete story, while symbolism is a singular object that can assist an allegory. For example, in Moby Dick, the whale is a symbol of meaning, and the captain chasing after him is a parallel to mankind seeking after the meaning of life or religious understanding. Fables and parables are both subcategories of allegory—every fable and parable is an allegory, but not every allegory is a fable or parable. The latter are generally short stories with hidden meanings. However, fables tend to anthropomorphize objects and animals, while parables are more realistic and describe everyday occurrences. The popular fable The Tortoise and the Hare has human-like animals competing in a race. It’s easy to determine that the tortoise symbolizes a patient and consistent work ethic, while the hare symbolizes an impatient, inconsistent work ethic. The message, then, is that being methodical and dedicated to a task, rather than relying on bravado and no plan, is the winning strategy.⁷
A parable is a story that can have several meanings, and it’s often difficult to decipher them without an explanation. The Parable of the Sower is a realistic story about a farmer planting seeds that might have several meanings—for example, it could be about the care with which someone does their job. Jesus explains, however, that the seeds represent the Gospel and the four soils in which the seeds do or don’t grow represent people’s different responses to the Gospel. Both terms reference an idea that’s not explicitly stated, but an allegory is a complete story, while a metaphor is a figure of speech. “His love was my anchor to this world” is a metaphor that describe someone’s love as crucial to this person’s existence. While metaphors aren’t a means for telling a story, they can appear or be alluded to several times in a written work to flesh out the idea being told; this is known as an extended metaphor or conceit. Zootopia is an allegorical movie that uses a society of animals to allude to racism. In the movie, predators and prey live in harmony, but there are still problems with stereotyping and profiling that exist under the surface. The primary conflict of the film comes when predators begin attacking prey unexpectedly. In the climax, it’s revealed that animals in power conspired to lower predators’ social status by spreading propaganda that predators are dangerous and savage by nature. But even before the attacks and the conspiracy, there were prejudices that threatened the peace of Zootopia. For example, all animals are expected to follow certain career paths based on their perceived strengths and weaknesses. Judy Hops, a rabbit thought to be timid and fragile, wants to break those limitations and become a police officer. This is met with shock and derision. Another stereotype is that foxes shouldn’t be trusted due to their sly nature; secondary protagonist Nick Wilde, a fox, internalized this prejudice and resigned himself to being a con artist. All aspects of this movie parallel racism and its detrimental effects in real life in a way that even children can understand. In the song “Meadowlark” from the musical The Baker’s Wife, Geneviève, the titular wife, debates whether she should stay with her husband or run away with a younger man. The song tells the story of a blind meadowlark who is saved by a king who loves her. The meadowlark dies after refusing to leave the king for a god. The meadowlark symbolizes Geneviève and what she feels will happen if she stays with her husband. The Pilgrim’s Progress was published in 1678 and is believed to be the first allegory ever written in English. A man named Christian lives in the City Destruction, and a character named Evangelist tells him to go to the Celestial City. On his journey, Christian runs into a cast of character who either help or hinder him. Each character’s name symbolizes their personality and what role they’ll play in Christian’s journey. Worldly Wiseman, for example, tries to get Christian to give up his religious life and submit to worldly pleasures. But characters aren’t the only allegorical symbols. When Christian is visited by a Shining One at Christ’s cross, he’s given a certificate that provides entrance to the Celestial City. This symbolizes Christ’s salvation and the ability to go to heaven if people accept Christ into their hearts. There’s also a place called the Delectable Mountains, and shepherds warn Christian against taking the shortcuts called Caution and Error. All these places and characters come together to show that the path of Christianity isn’t an easy one. There will be many hardships and tests, but anyone who stays on the right path will reap the rewards. Another spiritual and conceptual allegory, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the story of a young girl named Lucy who stumbles upon a magical land called Narnia. There, the evil White Witch has made it eternally winter, and only Aslan the lion can save all the creatures from harm.⁸
One of Lucy’s brothers, Edmund, makes a pact with the White Witch to hand over his siblings, who are loyal to Aslan; this represents Judas betraying Christ. When Edmund is to be punished for his actions, Aslan sacrifices himself, just as Christ sacrificed his life on the cross. The entire story teaches the morals of good versus evil and how kindness, honesty, and humility are rewarded, while evil and greed is not. Using the characters of the children, the lion, and the witch captivates the attention of young audiences and helps them understand the complexities of good and evil. Animal Farm is a historical allegory that parallels the Communist Party ruling Russia and the Soviet Union. Each character symbolizes someone in real life: Napoleon symbolizes Joseph Stalin, and Snowball symbolizes Leon Trotsky. In the story, the animals in Manor Farm decide they’d be better off without the humans running their lives. After chasing them out, two pigs take leadership: Snowball and Napoleon. Napoleon eventually gains power and loses sight of the original goals and sought-after freedoms the animals had rebelled for. He lets humans back onto the farm and then he and his followers start to act like humans. By the end of the novel, no one can tell the difference.
This story tells how power can corrupt, and because Orwell wrote it using animals rather than the actual historical figures, he could safely give his opinion without drawing negative backlash. This allegory is about a hard-working man named Gregor who turns into a grotesque bug. His family, disgusted by his appearance, isolates him to a bedroom and doesn’t bother to feed or pay attention to him. His sister, Grete, cares for him for a time but eventually ignores him like everyone else. He is physically abused and eventually dies of starvation. Kafka uses the bug to symbolize loneliness and how it feels to be alienated by society. When Gregor turns into the bug, he is unable to provide for his family; they get jobs, making him irrelevant and unneeded because he’s no longer the source of financial security. This conceptualizes how a person of no perceived use is regarded by others, making readers consider how they would feel in a similar situation of inferiority.⁹
Allegory is a literary device used to express large, complex ideas in an approachable manner. Allegory allows writers to create some distance between themselves and the issues they are discussing, especially when those issues are strong critiques of political or societal realities. The word “allegory” comes from the Latin “allegoria,” meaning speaking to imply something else. An allegory is a simple story that represents a larger point about society or human nature, whose different characters may represent real-life figures. Sometimes, situations in the story may echo stories from history or modern-day life, without ever explicitly stating this connection. Allegories are similar to metaphors in that both illustrate an idea by making a comparison to something else. However, allegories are complete stories with characters, while metaphors are brief figures of speech. (Learn more about metaphors in our complete guide here.)
Allegory is used in writing to express large, sometimes abstract ideas, or to comment on society. In some cases, such as in the classic political allegory novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell, allegory gives the author cover to talk about controversial ideas that otherwise might be too dangerous to talk about explicitly. There are several different types of allegory, each serving a different purpose. They include:
Biblical allegory. Biblical allegory invokes themes from the Bible, and often explores the struggle between good and evil. One example of Biblical allegory is C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. The lion, Aslan, represents a Christ character, who is the rightful ruler of the kingdom of Narnia. Aslan sacrifices himself for Edmund, the Judas figure, and is resurrected to rule over Narnia once again. Biblical allegory can also refer to allegorical interpretations of the Bible, which differ from literal interpretations, and were popular in the Middle Ages.
Classical allegory. One of the best known allegories in classical literature is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In this story, Plato imagines people living in a cave, only ever seeing objects as shadows reflected on the wall from the light of a fire—rather than seeing the objects directly. Plato used the cave as a symbolic representation of how humans live in the world, contrasting reality versus our interpretation of it.
Modern allegory. Modern allegory includes many instances of a phenomenon called “allegoresis,” which refers to the interpretation of works as allegorial without them necessarily being intended that way. For example, there is an ongoing debate among readers about J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series, and whether or not the books were written as an allegory for World War I.
Allegory has been used in literature over hundreds of years. Here are some prominent allegory examples. George Orwell, Animal Farm. Animal Farm is a great example of allegory, and is often taught in high school English classes to introduce the concept. In this farm fable, animals run a society that divides into factions and mirrors the rise of Leon Trotsky and the Russian Revolution. The story can be read as a fable of farm animals running a society, or it can be interpreted as the author’s criticism of communism. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene. The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem published originally in 1590. In this poem, Spenser established the Spenserian stanza. The poem follows several Arthurian knights, and explores twelve virtues. However, the poem was widely read as a commentary on the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. (Whether the commentary is positive or negative continues to be debated by academics and critics today.)¹⁰
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. In Hawthorne’s novel, set in the 1600s but published in 1850, Hester Prynne is forced to undergo public humiliation, including wearing the scarlet letter “A” (standing for “adultress”) after she becomes pregnant out of wedlock. The scarlet letter is itself an allegorical representation of sin, and how society punishes it. The novel can be read as a criticism of the hypocrisy of a Puritanical society. Aesop’s Fables. These fables were originally part of an oral tradition in ancient Greece, and are credited to an ancient Greek slave named Aesop. They are a collection of fables, often aimed at children, that offer guidance on a wide variety of social, political, and religions topics. Aesop’s Fables are allegory in the form of instructive lessons—stories that teach children how to behave and what to value.
1. Think of an important idea you want to share with your reader. It should be something large and complex, and something that relates to the society you live in on a large scale.
2. Once you’ve decided on a topic, plan out your allegory. Think of how you will translate these real-world ideas into fictional scenes and characters. Carefully assign characters: animals are common, as in Aesop’s Fables and Animal Farm, but there is no rule about what sort of characters to use.
3. Whatever you choose, remember that your audience will be trying to figure out who each character represents in real life, so try not to confuse them with unrelated characters whose purpose is not clear.
4. Be sure to let your reader know how to read between the lines. You will need to leave clues without over-explaining your message. Don’t be so subtle that the readers will miss the point of the allegory.
5. The surface story must stand on its own. While the underlying message can be a bit abstract, this isn’t an essay or a speech. The top layer must still make sense and be intriguing in its own right.