Inspired Pen — A Literary Life

Allegories are all over literature. They can be in the form of prose or poetry. Without going into details, an allegory can include characters or events that can symbolically represent human beings and human conditions.   

 The first book that comes to mind, when I think of allegories, is the Bible. Why? Simply because it has lots of them – allegories and symbolism. Some of them are in story form. In the case of love songs found in The Songs of Solomon in the Old Testament, God’s love has been referred to as love for His church or love for His people, and so forth.

There are many more but some famous allegorical books include George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Albert Camus’s Plague.  

 Animal Farm is an allegorical animal fable in which the animals rebel against their masters. The animals represent those who overthrow the tsars in
Russia.

The Divine Comedy is an allegorical epic that traces Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory and paradise, symbolizing a person’s earthly life.