What is an allegory?

I don’t know if it’s true, but I once read that the story of Winnie the Pooh is actually about mental illness.

Pooh has an eating disorder. Piglet struggles with anxiety. Tigger has ADHD, while Eeyore obviously has depression. Kanga is obsessively protective, OCD.  And Christopher Robin? You guessed it… schizophrenia, and that the whole world of the Hundred Acre Wood exists inside his mind.

If that’s true, Winnie the Pooh is more than a beloved children’s book. It’s an allegory. But then, most children’s books are.

An allegory is an extended metaphor that operates on layered levels. Every character, every setting, even the plot itself, symbolizes something else.

Take Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The story is about the 1692 Salem witch trials, or so it seems.  That’s on the surface level. Miller wrote in the 1950s. This was during the height of the Red Scare and McCarthyism. At this time, Americans were accused of communism with little to no evidence. Their careers were ruined. Their lives were destroyed.

Miller saw a parallel between the two periods. There was an irrational fear that created a mob mentality. Accusations were made without proof, leading to public trials and panic. So he wrote a play about witches to talk about communists, without ever naming names. The entire play functions as an allegory for McCarthyism.

It’s a brilliant device for social commentary.

Allegory allows a writer to criticize people, societies, governments, and ideologies like the Red Scare, without even pointing a finger.

The deeper meaning is there for those who know how to look. Think of Orwell’s Animal Farm, another classic example. In this story, pigs run a farm but symbolize Soviet rulers. They represent the corruption of revolutionary ideals.

Allegory isn’t easy to write. It takes planning, precision, and subtlety. But it is one of the most powerful tools in a writer’s kit. If you want to speak to the heart of your time, you can do it without preaching.

You say more by saying something else entirely.

Next time, we’ll build on this technique and examine the device of allusion. A single phrase can express an entire story or song. It does so by linking one story, song, or idea to another.

Happy Writing!

M.C. Convery