Allegory (Figurative Language)

Allegory

Any time several lower-level concepts are combined to produce a more complex one, confusion will arise; this holds true nowhere more obviously in high school and university English classrooms than when the idea of allegory is introduced. Allegory combines elements of symbol, metaphor, and allusion to create an overarching effect that works over the entire course of a literary text. Allegory provides a sustained and coherent second level of meaning in a text, and without an understanding of this level, the text will often seem far shallower and overly simple.

Just as a symbol is something which stands for itself and something else, an allegory is a story that stands for itself but also another "story," whether that be an actual literary story or a historical event. We can see aspects of allusion here, in that the surface story makes a sustained reference to a story outside itself, and we also see metaphor as one story is laid over the other and the two are brought into comparison through the juxtaposition. When all of these elements work together in a sustained way over the course of a literary work, we have an allegory.

If identifying any of the other aspects of figurative language is sometimes difficult, identifying allegory is a true challenge for the literary novice. In order for an allegory to work, the reader needs to be aware of the prior "story" that is being allegorized. For example, many students are completely unaware that Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution. As a result, they read it only as an animal fable, and many wonder why on earth they have been asked to read a children's story in high school or university. Because it is so important for the reader to understand the allegory, authors have several devices at their disposal which make their purposes more apparent, ranging from the blatant to the subtle.

The first way of cluing the reader in to the presence of allegory almost feels like cheating: the author or publisher can simple tell readers somewhere in or on the book that the work is allegorical. This may be a sign that the allegory is weakly presented or completely not obvious, and it is probably the worst way to give readers insight. Another is to give some key characters names that strongly resemble those characters or people in the story being allegorized, as well as giving them corresponding physical and personal traits. If there is a tyrannical rat in my animal fable novel with a little moustache and the name "Adolph Ratler," it will be plain to all familiar with World War II that the rat stands in for Hitler. The appropriate arrangement of events is another, more subtle way to make readers aware of the allegory present in a story, although this requires more work on the part of both the author and reader. First, the author has to know the events he or she is allegorizing very well, and must present the key elements in the right order to trigger awareness in the reader. The reader must be aware of the historical situation being described so that the clues and parallels trigger the situation in his or her mind.

Allegory can be centered on very specific events and circumstances, like a particular battle, or around much larger events, like the progress of a war, revolution, or even the entire reign of a monarch. History supplies the majority of allegorical subjects, with religious and political events being the most widely used. The earlier the allegory, the more likely it is to be based on religious themes; take Dante's Divine Comedy as a prime example. Later works tend to focus on the political, like Orwell's Animal Farm.