Allegory : An essay derived from existing works R.N.

Prasher Introduction Allegory is a symbolic fictional narrative that conveys a secondary meaning not explicitly set forth in the literal narrative. Allegory encompasses such forms as fable, parable, and apologue and may involve either a literary or an interpretive process. Literary allegories typically describe situations and events or express abstract ideas in terms of material objects, persons, and actions. Such early writers as Plato, Cicero, Apuleius, and Augustine made use of allegory, but it became especially popular in sustained narratives in the Middle Ages. Probably the most influential allegory of that period is the 13th-century French didactic poem Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose). This poem illustrates the allegorical technique of personification, in which a fictional character--in this case, The Lover--transparently represents a concept or a type. As in most allegories, the action of the narrative "stands for" something not explicitly stated. The Lover's eventual plucking of the crimson rose represents his conquest of his lady. Other notable examples of personification allegory are John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) and the medieval morality play Everyman. Their straightforward embodiments of aspects of human nature and abstract concepts, through such characters as Knowledge, Beauty, Strength, and Death in Everyman and such places as Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond in The Pilgrim's Progress, are typical examples of the techniques of personification allegory. Another variant is the symbolic allegory, in which a character or material thing is not merely a transparent vehicle for an idea, but rather has a recognizable identity or narrative autonomy apart from the message it conveys. In Dante's Divine Comedy, for example, the character Virgil represents both the historical author of The Aeneid and the human faculty of reason, while the character Beatrice represents both the historical woman of Dante's acquaintance and the concept of divine revelation. The symbolic allegory, which can range from a simple fable to a complex, multilayered narrative, has often been used to represent political and historical situations and has long been popular as a vehicle for satire. In the verse satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681), for example, John Dryden relates in heroic couplets a scriptural story that is a thinly veiled portrait of the politicians involved in an attempt to alter the succession to the English throne. A modern example of political allegory is George Orwell's novel Animal Farm (1945), which, under the guise of a fable about domestic animals, expresses the author's disillusionment with the outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution

and shows how one tyrannical system of government in Russia was merely replaced by another.

Definition Definitions of allegory usually invoke the formula "saying one thing and meaning another," thus treating it as a kind of use of language. Many forces conspire to make this view convincing. The etymology combines "other" and "speech" What is allegory? Simply put, an allegory is a fiction, almost invariably a story, which is designed, first and foremost, to illustrate a coherent doctrine which exists outside the fiction. Thus, the story and everything in it bear an immediate and point by point reference to a very specific aspect of the controlling doctrine which the fiction is illustrating. In that sense, allegories tend to be what we might call "philosophical" fictions, a term which means that they are to a large extent shaped and controlled by ideas or by a system of ideas which exists independently of the allegorical text. Allegories tend to be very popular because they are the simplest way to appeal to and to confirm the belief system of the audience. We like to see the good people win out and the bad ones punished, often in a very simple way, because that confirms the belief system we bring to the world (or which we would like to bring to the world). Often allegories are the least complicated and most pleasing ways to remind people of a particular belief system. Hence allegories have always been an important way of educating people, from childhood onwards, because they present important doctrinal or abstract ideas in the form of a pleasing fiction. And a large part of the popularity of Pilgrim's Progress arises from the fact that it was the essential text in the raising of many Protestant children within the home (in the days before Walt Disney). Allegories need to be distinguished from symbolic stories. Both allegorical structures and symbolic structures derive their full meaning from something beyond the literal meaning of the word, event, image, or character in the fiction. That is, they both point to a range of meanings beyond themselves. The major difference is that in

allegories the reference point is clear and relatively unambiguous; whereas, with symbols the range of meaning is more ambiguous and uncertain. In between clearly allegorical meaning and more ambiguous symbolic meaning stands a third category of literary reference called parable. In a parable, we seem to be working clearly within an allegorical framework in the sense that a very simple meaning seems to be indicated, but often the simple meaning turns out to be not so immediately obvious to figure out. The famous examples of this form, of course, are the parables of Jesus in the New Testament and, in modern times, the short stories of Franz Kafka. There are two main types of allegories: (1) Historical and political allegory, in which the characters and actions that are signified literally in turn signify, or 'allegorize' historical personages and events. So in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681) King David represents Charles II. (2) The allegory of ideas, in which the literal characters represent abstract concepts and the plot serves to communicate a doctrine or thesis. (Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, 1678, parts of Milton's Paradise Lost, Hawthorn's "Young Goodman Brown"). The central device in the sustained allegory of ideas is the personification of abstract entities such as virtues, vices, states of mind, and types of character; in the more explicit allegories, such reference is specified by the character's name I do not pretend to say that there is always an exact correspondence between the literal level and the allegorical level of interpretation in this novel. The great Florentine Platonist of the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino, warned us about that in the fourth discourse of his Symposium when he wrote: "One must not think that everything that is put into a figure has some meaning; many meaningless things are put there because of exigencies of order and transition." History of allegory Allegory was nothing new. Forerunners of allegory existed in the folk myths of Mesopotamic society, as well as African and Asian cultures. But in the written and oral culture of the Greeks, allegory was more specifically utilized for its instructive capabilities. In Plato's allegory of the cave, for instance, the essence of allegory is evident: a physical world and an abstract or spiritual one are defined in a one-to-one correspondence, implicitly affirming the spiritual world as superior to the material. The one-to-one correspondence of elements is a characteristic of other narrative

forms, including the fable (in which the world of beasts and the world of man are parallelled) and the parable, a short, narrative unit that imparts a moral. Different from these by degree more than type, allegory is an extensive narrative that addresses, with greater depth, the existence of a higher plane of consciousness. What the epic is to nations, the allegory is to religions. When the Roman Empire tried to surpass the Greeks in its increasing push for the realistic in art, allegory moved to the fringes, finding more use in folk and pagan religions, including the emerging followers of Christ. But as Rome moved inexorably to its demise, and Christianity assumed its power, allegory moved to the forefront. It showed up in the literature of educated Romans who saw in the fall of Rome a symbol of earth's ephemerality, as in Augustine's Confessions and The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. This artistic shift would be reflected in art as well, as the realism of sculpture and mosaics was replaced by the abstraction of iconographic art. In the series of Madonna paintings that emerged in the new Europe, worshippers were encouraged not to focus on Mary as person, but on Mary as type, as a reference to the God with whom she intereceded. The Christianized world of Europe found allegory the best vehicle to focus listeners and readers on the heavenly world that lay behind the illusory veil of the earthly. Dante's The Divine Comedy, Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, the early works of Chaucer, and the mystery, morality and miracle plays of the Church were representative of a worldview that saw the earth as a testing ground for a heavenly afterlife. Through allegory, Christians could be taught to see the material as an illusion, a deception, that which hid the face of God. In this culture, allegory could move from mere literary device to truth itself: allegory revealed the word of God. Persiles by Cervantes has been considered the first romance conceived, written and structured as a Christian allegory, more than a decade before the birth of John Bunyan, whose elaborate Christian romance, The Pilgrim's Progress would answer the Protestant call for an epic allegory, a counterpoint to the Catholicism of The Divine Comedy. Its tale of Christian and his journey through burning cities, past treacherous dragons, and in the company of all stripes of fools and tempters both detailed the Vanity Fair existence Protestants knew the earth to be, as well as instructed them how to see beyond the veil. And for a group of travelers launched on the storm waters of the Atlantic, and cast into the savagery of a new wilderness, Christian's journey was a perfect parallel to their own. If they could emulate his faith, they too could return to their real home, the Heavenly City.

As New England Protestantism transformed into Yankee pragmatism, giving birth in the 18th century to deism and unitarianism, allegory was supplanted by writing more logical than allegorical. But when Nathaniel Hawthorne began detailing the Puritan mind in works written in the mid-1800s, he knew to use allegory (not a large jump for a man who viewed the world through symbols). In The Scarlet Letter (1850), Hawthorne would probe with psychological precision the thinking of a Puritan community that viewed the material world as a hostile environment. But earlier, Hawthorne had explored the Puritan world more closely in two short stories "The Minister's Black Veil" and "Young Goodman Brown." The latter story, in particular, is an exact replication of a Puritan allegory, as well as a commentary on allegory itself and its emotionally manipulative possibilities. The Last Pass With this background, I proceed to look at a contemporary allegory "The Last Pass" by R.N. Prasher. I am aware that interpreting allegorical fiction presents for the literary critic a tempting danger. Since the fiction is so clearly and closely controlled by the external doctrine, there's a natural temptation to devote one's time, as an interpreter, to discussing the doctrine (the controlling ideas). This can be a major mistake, because it takes one's attention away from the text under scrutiny and directs it elsewhere. For the literary critic, what matters in an allegorical fiction is not the adequacy, coherence, or consistency of the doctrine which is being illustrated, important as that may be for other forms of enquiry. What is of central importance is how the literary text deals with the belief system, how it brings it alive,or fails to bring it alive, how it succeeds as a literary work in creating a particular vision. The Last Pass is an allegory of life as a journey in which humankind is a traveller. The various stages of life are represented as valleys separated by mountain passes. The Valleys have names which are metaphors corresponding to the stage represented. The infancy is called the Valley of Clouds, the childhood is the Valley of Stringed Sounds, the working life is the Valley of Labels within which are the Valley of Fragrance and the Valley of Circular Paths. Then there are the Valley of Thorns and the Valley of Peace. The last pass is an ever-present notion on this journey. One could reach the last pass from any point, but not by choice. Lack of choice is another dominant theme. You cannot choose. Even when you do, the choice is meaningless. The characters are a wizened old man and a curious, non-conformist child. The old man has been on this long journey and the child is eager to know about it. The setting, a house in a narrow lane in an old city, gives the story an oriental slant. As if

to emphasize that point, the old man addresses the child as "my son", a form which may be considered normal in the east but offensive in the west considering that the old man is far from being a priest. Embedded in the story are the interactions of the child with his mother and two other stories. One is called the Story of the Butterfly and the other is without a name. All these three are allegories within the allegory. This is an unusual device adopted by the writer. Can a metaphor extend another metaphor? Perhaps, the intention is to break the flow, with a kind of interlude. It may be that the character of the wizened old man was becoming too cold and detached to remain human and the so the Story of the Butterfly had to be inserted to make him a warm person again. Perhaps the referees were taking almost an alien form and therefore the mother of the child is brought in to show that the referees are roles rather than persons. Perhaps the wordless communication in the valley of clouds needed a metaphor to extend it to the real world and hence the story told in thought-space by the infant girl to our protagonist. The writer has left enough doors open for these stories through which the critic can wander without reaching a conclusion, as he does not even leave a hint that a conclusion exists. The thought-action pair is all over the work. They have been shown to be mutually exclusive. Thoughts are free, existence of free thoughts make a person do his own thing, which is threatening to the position of referees. Therefore, the referees invent the game of "action without thought". Rituals are the equipment, more like a ball, with which this game is played. Rituals are the "forms without life" which replace thoughts with actions. These are traps which are used for trapping free sounds which were found in the valley of clouds. The writer describes the loss of freedom of these sounds in moving terms: "The trapped sounds were very sad. Flying around was their life. Deprived of it, they became mere forms, mere empty shells of their original selves. They lay limp in their traps. Then this traveller picked them up, one by one, pierced them and passed a string through. ...The stringed sounds could be hurled at someone, could hit and hurt......the trapped sounds are forced to lose their shape, their effect, their flight. Gradually, they take the shape of the trap. ....once these sounds are trapped and stringed, there are only lifeless shells left." So what happens if a traveller still manages to have free sounds, which create thoughts. That calls for drastic measures: "....fellow travellers immediately get a doubt that you have dumped your trap. That you have free sounds around you and in your thought space, creating new thoughts. Then there is a flurry of activity. Referees are called to surround you with

rituals so that your thoughts are converted into action as soon as these are born. Your thoughts would seek a friendly dark corner where they can hide from these monstrous rituals. But the referees know about it. So they bombard you with brightness, of light and of their faith. As the thoughts get temporarily blinded with all this brightness, the rituals grab and convert these into action. At the same time, other travellers are busy trapping free sounds around you and stringing them. Soon, there will be no free sounds left, no thoughts will be born and then you will be begging the referees to let you play their games." Thus, the only choice, that of thought, also does not last for long. The old man has an advice for one who wants to have free sounds and thoughts. He should stay clear of the referees. That would mean being alone as others are busy playing the game of rituals. Of course, one can look for another who equally wants these free sounds around. In the book, the writer draws a subtle difference between knowing and understanding. While the latter is disparaged, the former is supposed to come without effort. When the old man fails to find an example to illustrate the difference, the child pipes in: "I know the song of that bird over there but I do not understand it." Similarly, a distinction is drawn between asking questions and questioning somebody's answers. True to their image as proponents of conformity, the referees encourage the former but are averse to the latter. With metaphors like seeing more clearly with closed eyes, the writer has substituted the imaginary with the real and compels the reader to doubt the existence of perceived reality. In the Valley of Fragrance, which the old man prefers to call the valley of daydreams, the old man himself suffers from illusion of seeing travellers flying with their thin wings like wisps of air with jewels stuck on them. He attributes the illusion to seeing with partly open eyes. The hint is towards understanding again which deludes and leads to false conclusions. The pitfalls of being self-righteous have not escaped the attention of the writer. On a mention that some referees say that valley are getting crowded, the child says that he won't like the valleys to be crowded if ever he went there. The old man chides him: "Now you talk like them. Why should you go there if you do not want to get it crowded? Others may not like the crowding caused by your presence."

Then again, the child feels that the referees are up to no good and these "meddlers" as he calls them, should be stopped. The response of the old man is apt: "Once I did try to convince the travellers about the real colour of these referees. But later in the journey I knew something else. I thought I was right. The referees thought they were right. I thought I had the right to decide who is right. They thought they had this right. Where does it lead to? That I was thinking like the referees. Not a pleasant thought. After that I decided to leave them alone. You are also talking of meddling with the meddlers. That makes you a meddler. Do you like that?" Perhaps, in the present atmosphere of religious-based strife, this thought could be worth something. The writer uses labels as a metaphor for all recognition through referees' design. Such recognition is shown to be for meaningless achievements. Of course, the referees bestow all apparently superior labels, the monikers, on each other. Near the end of the journey the referees are seen burdened by numerous labels which their dubious efforts have earned for them. Sometimes, the referees are not even able to walk because of this and have to be carried by other travellers. It looks more like the conferment of Doctorate degrees and various awards on politicians of dubious credentials who lead a parasitic life. The valley of thorns and within it, the zone of haze represents the physical problems which confront humanity during the journey of life. It is here that the goodness of each traveller is put to test. Again, the 'closed eyes' metaphor is used to escape from the zone of haze. That is a leap in the dark and to the writer appears to be preferable to inaction and suffering when no other obvious solution is in sight. Near the end of it all, most of us would enter the valley of peace, though the lucky ones do so early in the journey. In this valley, there are resting points. A sign at the rest point says: "Do not hurry to another place if you know you are happy here." Yet, one has to go on towards the last pass. So, after a while the sign is turned by the wind showing the other side: "This journey is full of rest points; all equally pleasant"

The known is easy to show in the allegory. But how will the old man tell about the last pass because, even though he is widely travelled, he has not yet reached there. Nor could he have met anyone who has been to the last pass. The writer cleverly avoids that difficulty by making the child pay a coin every time the old man tells a part of story. On the last day, after taking the coin, the old man tells the child that after this one crosses over the last pass. The child wants to know what is beyond the last pass. Yet, his desire remains unfulfilled as he does not have another coin. Does this book have a message and meaning or it falls in the category of allegories which Croce called a collection of useless repetitions or Macaulay called intrinsically dull. It does appear that using metaphors for the known requires writing with an effort. Yet, if in the known there is something which is forgotten or which has gone outside the area of awareness, imagination finds a role. The Last Pass does make us travellers on the journey of life pause and think about us, the fellow travellers, the referees, our illusions and the truth which can be seen only with the closed eyes of a child.