Allegories and Allusions

An allegory is literary device or technique when one character or place represents a part of ourselves, an historical person or group, or a real place.

A famous example is in the fairy tale The Three Little Pigs where, as first described by Bruno Bettleheim in The Uses of Enchantment, the three pigs represent different aspects of ourselves. The "brick pig" represents the reality principle in us -- the part of us that recognizes that we must deal with reality and its obligations and responsibilities. The "straw pig," in contrast, represents the pleasure principle, or the part of us that gravitates towards pleasure and enjoyment in life. The "stick pig" represents a psychological middle ground between the two opposites of operating based on reality or pleasure, showing us, Bettleheim says, that growth is possible along a continuum. (image source)Another example along these lines is Aesop's fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper, where the ant represents the reality principle and the grasshopper, the pleasure principle. Likewise, in Aesop's The Tortoise and the Hare, the plodding, determined tortoise can represent the reality principle, while the boastful, nap-taking hare is governed by the pleasure principle. The purpose of the allegory can be to entertain but it can also be to instruct. An allegory can work in other ways, too, such as when a character represents an actual person, such as in Orwell's Animal Farm, when Napoleon the pig represents Josef Stalin. Major, the old pig who puts forth his vision of communism, then dies, represents Karl Marx, the "grandfather of Communism." Even though Orwell's 1942 fable had leaders of Russian communism indirectly represented by farm animals, the book was not allowed to be published until WWII ended, since Stalin and the USSR was an important ally in defeating Nazi Germany.

Likewise, a place in a story with allegorical qualities, can represent a specific place in the world. In Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, for example, the Old Zone at the south pole on the "second (invisible) moon Khatani" around Earth represents the older spiritual and religious stories of mankind, while the dark lands of the Chupwalas represents territory ruled by Muslim extremists, and the bright lands of the Guppees represents lands governed through democracy.