You may have read the story 'A Rabbit and a Tortoise'. The tortoise challenged the rabbit to race. When the competition started, the rabbit went too far in a flash. It thought tortoise would still be far behind so it should take rest for a while. It slept under a tree but the tortoise continued its work and eventually reached the winning point just before the rabbit.
That is, a slow tortoise defeats a fast rabbit.
Now the real thing is that there has never been such a contest in the entire history of the animals, nor is it possible for a tortoise to defeat a rabbit in a race. You might think all of this is illogical. It may not make sense for you.
But if we read this story below the surface level, we will see that this is not actually the story of a tortoise and a rabbit. These are just two characters that have been used to depict two different concepts and principles. Just like if you have a friend who is overly cautious about spending money, you jokingly say, "If a man wants to see miserliness in human form, he can see this friend of mine." Or another of your friends who always feels jealousy for you and who doesn't like seeing others' achievements, you can say, "this friend of mine is the human form of jealousy."
In the same way, the characters in this story are also representation of some ideas and principles. The tortoise is presented as the physical form of persistence and constancy and the rabbit as the physical form of negligence and inconstancy. That is, if there is a contest between constancy and inconstancy in life, constancy will surpass. Or you could say that the rabbit is a symbol of pride and arrogance, and the tortoise is the symbol of humility. In the war of pride and humility, humility will always prevail.
So, this story teaches us the principles of life in a very simple way and you see that we can interpret this story in many ways and its characters as symbols of different concepts.
So just such a story is called Allegory in which characters are portrayed as the physical form of certain ideas or qualities. The purpose of such stories is to explain a principle and to convey a moral lesson to the readers. You know that truth, falsehood, honesty, goodness, evil, jealousy, laziness, consistency, inconsistency etc. are all concepts in our mind. They are not visible to the human eye, nor can they be touched. They have no image. That is why they are called abstract concepts. What happens is that the author of Allegory, in his story, presents the same abstract concepts in living and physical forms. That form may be of an animal, a bird, a particular human being, or even some other character that the writer creates with his own imagination. These characters are used as symbols of different concepts.
Image by Angeles Balaguer from Pixabay
In addition, Allegory can also be a picture or painting on which certain characters represent certain ideas. In order to understand Allegory we have to go deep into that story or painting, while at the surface level we cannot reach the message of the writer or the painter.
In other words, Allegory carries double meanings, literal as well as figurative. There are actually two stories. A hidden story also runs below the surface story. For example, in the surface story you might be shown that two neighbors are throwing stones at each other's houses, but in this case the hidden story may be about the ongoing war between the two neighboring countries.
The fictional situation presented in an allegory indirectly makes a comparison with some real situation. Fight between two neighbors is a fictional situation which represents the real situation of war between two neighboring countries.
Allegory is like an extended metaphor. Both are used to describe a particular point and both make a comparison with something else. Metaphor is a brief figure of speech. It is just an object, while in allegory the whole story is metaphorical which actually makes a comparison with another story. And the other story goes along between the lines. In order to tell a real story, the writer creates an imaginary story. This thing not only increases the interest of the readers or listeners but also makes them understand the real story.
Now we look at some examples.
1. Aesop’s Fables: Most of the mortal stories you read in childhood are Allegories. For example, The Rabbit and the Tortoise, The Fox and the Grapes, The Thirsty Crow, The Lamb and the Wolf etc. all are allegorical stories. These characters are symbols of a various ideas and qualities. These stories are termed as ‘Short Allegory’.
2. Then there is Edmund Spencer's Faerie Queene which is a very famous ‘Moral Allegory’. In this story, not only characters but also some incidents are allegorical. Spencer very artistically points to the political and religious conflicts of his time in the small events that took place in the course of this story.
3. You must have seen films made on CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. That story of Edmund, Suzan, Lucy and Aslan. Some people say that It is also an allegory that symbolizes the events of Jesus Christ's life. Such an allegory is termed as ‘Biblical Allegory’ which is based on the stories taken from the Bible.
4. John Bunyan's The Pilgrims Progress is a ‘Spiritual Allegory’ which depicts the journey of man towards spirituality.
5. George Orwell's Animal Farm is one of the best allegories written in English language. It is called a 'Political Allegory' because it portrays themes and characters connected with the Russian Revolution and the Communist system through a variety of animal characters.
6. And Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave is a ‘Classical Allegory’ which describes that real knowledge can only be achieved through philosophical thinking rather than human perception or emotions.
I hope you have understood this famous figure of speech and this article will be very helpful for you in this regard. You can visit my YouTube Channel ‘Taste of Learning’ for an Urdu/Hindi video presentation on this topic and many other literary terms which you would definitely love to know about.
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