How to Write an Allegory

How to Write an Allegory

Part I

Allegories are a very funny genre. They have a lot to say, but they want to say it in a mysterious or slightly cryptic way. They can be broken down into two basic categories. The first, one we’re quite familiar with, is a story that more or less forms a big equal sign to an actual event, movement, or person in history. It is a stylized, metaphorical way to tell an historical tale. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a famous example of this. Orwell sought to capture the nuances of the Russian revolution and Soviet Era by making very neat one-to-one relationships between his farm animals and key characters in the revolution. The pigs were leading revolutionaries, the Lenins and Stalins. Their frightening dog cohorts? The secret police. The big horse everyone loved? Certain Russian heroes who were used at first, then eliminated when their popularity became too volatile too control. Napolean the donkey? The skeptics of the regime, who managed to survive by keeping their mouths shut. By the end of the tale (spoiler alert), the pigs have started walking on their hind legs like the humans they replaced, just as the Communist dictators ending up no better than the Czars they overthrew. After the jump: the second kind of allegory.

The second is a vaguer and altogether more nebulous genre of literature. People will often debate over whether these even qualify as allegories, but they are still representing real elements of history or reality, just in a less tidy way. It is sometimes hard to figure out exactly what these stories are concluding. They almost always have an ominous undertone, though, a breath of the darkness of the real world. A good example of this kind of allegory is Shirley Jackson’s haunting short story “The Lottery.” In it a cheerful small town community is gathered for some sort of annual festival in which everyone draws a piece of paper out of a box. Everything seems normal until a dark shadow seems to loom over the story, and we learn that the one person who draws a paper with a black mark on it gets stoned to death by the rest. “The Lottery” is a nightmarish tale about conformity and groupthink; it is most often interpreted as an allegory of the holocaust. Because of its nebulous shape, the story can actually be applied to many different chapters of human history, but it allegorizes a common theme of human behavior.

Considering these two kinds of allegory, it’s first necessary to choose what kind of allegory you really want to write. Are you wanting to closely and cleverly mirror an actual event? Or are you aiming at a more general human truth that needs to be made slightly surreal in order to be given expression? Both can provide startling and dynamic stories with a lot to say. That’s one big requirement of both forms of allegory, however: you must have something to say. You must feel something strongly about an issue and want to represent it in fiction. So: how do you go about it?

The next step, once you’ve picked the issue or event you want to represent, is to pick what sort of setting you’re going to represent it in. By setting, I really mean context. Are you going to use a George Orwell or Aesop motif and use animals? It’s popular and many writers have done it successfully. Will you be using elements of the surreal or fantastical? Allegories don’t necessarily need them. For example, warfare can be allegorized as the playground scuffles of young children. The thing about writing an allegory is that even without the fantastic element, you are creating a fictional world. This world may operate with rules completely different from our own, but it has to have its own rules, its own internal logic. Without that, the story will be incoherent. That’s why an allegory is a kind of story that does actually require a little planning beforehand. It’s a genre that requires structure and symmetry, planning and coherence. So spend some time thinking before you start writing.

How to Write an Allegory, Part II

When last we were discussing how to write an allegory, I was talking about the first steps necessary to take: your issue, and your context. Once you have a fairly good idea of these two things, it’s time to start writing your allegory, pretty much the same way you’d be writing any normal story. You want plenty of good grabbing action, a consistent voice, fluid syntax, and vivid description. Start developing your characters and give them backgrounds. You don’t have to worry as much about creating depth for them, however, because this is an allegory, after all; the people in it are symbols, archetypes, not supposed to be completely real. That doesn’t mean they should be one-dimensional, however, or no one will care about reading about them. You must always keep your issue in mind, however. Say you’re doing an allegory of World War II or aspects of the holocaust. There are unending visual touches that you can integrate into a story to give it that feel. Snow, barking dogs, train cars, barbed wire, smokestacks. People forced to wear markers on their clothing or given tattoos identifying them as members of a group. All of this is rich visual material that can be used in your story as long as it is integrated into the plot or setting.

The final thing to remember about writing an allegory is that it’s a puzzle, a riddle of sorts that you are offering to your reader. The key is that all is not what it seems; everything, instead, stands for something else, often something very dark. You are dropping visual and plot-related clues as to what this stands for. You must have a clear idea yourself of what you’re pointing at, or else the reader won’t have a chance. As if it’s a mystery story, leave clues, but don’t sacrifice the surface story to make the deeper one perfect, either. The surface story must be engaging enough to stand on its own, which is a challenge when it’s only a cover-up. Write and rewrite. Fail and try again. It’s a tricky genre of story, but immensely satisfying when you’ve got one done right, because it is a story that says something.

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