What is Allegory in Literature? (Definition)
An allegory is a sustained narrative in which the surface story exists alongside a second, parallel meaning. Every major character, event, or setting stands for something outside the text—a political movement, a moral concept, a religious idea—so that reading the story is also reading an argument about that subject. Unlike symbolism, which adds depth to an otherwise realistic narrative, allegory replaces the realistic level with one-to-one correspondence.
Allegory has a long pedagogical tradition. Medieval writers used it to dramatise spiritual journeys; modern writers use it to disguise political critique or to make abstract systems visible. Recognising an allegory means asking what each element represents and how the writer's argument unfolds through the analogy.
Examples of Allegory
Example 1: Allegory in Animal Farm
Orwell's farm is a one-to-one allegory of the Russian Revolution: Old Major is Marx, Napoleon is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, the windmill is industrialisation. The allegory lets Orwell make a political argument about how revolutionary ideals collapse into tyranny without writing a polemic—the story carries the analysis on its back.
Example 2: Allegory in The Pilgrim's Progress
Bunyan names his characters and places by the qualities they represent—Christian, Faithful, the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair—so that the journey is simultaneously a story and a map of the Christian soul's progress toward salvation. The allegorical labels make the spiritual argument unmistakable to a seventeenth-century lay reader.
Example 3: Allegory in Lord of the Flies
The boys' island society allegorises the fragility of civilisation: the conch represents democratic order, Piggy's glasses represent reason and science, the beast represents inner human evil. When the conch shatters, civilisation does too. The allegory turns a survival story into an argument about human nature.