Essays on Allegory

Twelve Angry Men is an allegorical play written by Reginald Rose in 1955. It depicts the way in which economic, social and cultural factors can have a significant impact on the process of justice. Rose encapsulates 1950s America through each of the 12 jurors, giving...

It is perceived to an extent that Plato’s analogy of the cave gives us great insight into reality, due to the symbolic relevance of the different objects and characters in the Cave I.e. The prisoners, shackles, (eventually) the Sun and nature, and the knowledgeable prisoner...

The Darkness In this world, there are many things going on. A lot may know what is happening and some may not. There are many “dark” places in the world where they are isolated from the outside and they only know about the inside. Countries...

In many ways The Faerie Queene presents a unique challenge to the English reader. It can be described as epic, romance or fantasy and covers a wide range of topics religious and romantic, political and spiritual, Christian and Pagan. It is also incomplete, leaving the...

Why would a writer choose to write a Christian allegory? It is not a new concept, nor is it easy to create a presentation of the Christian allegory with new and interesting insight to captivate readers. Bunyan wrote his Christian allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, while...

Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories tells a fictional tale of a young protagonist named Haroun who travels to the Sea of Stories to help his father gain back his skill of storytelling. This narrative was a consequence of Rushdie’s many years in...

Many people fear death, which is why some would do anything to escape it. Few things in life are impossible to live without, one of those things is death. It is impossible to live without death. Death is a requirement. Edgar Allen Poe is known...

Today, most Americans can only imagine what the horrors of the Holocaust must have been like – and, to be frank, they are probably very glad that they have no personal experiences to draw on. However, the Holocaust, and other catastrophic events in history, must...

The dynamic personalities of Euripides’s Bacchae all serve allegorical purposes within the play’s lines: to represent social orders within ancient Greek culture. The interactions between these characters send a clear message to the audience regarding the practices of healthy society, and the harsh repercussions that...

Allegory in Jose Saramago’s Blindness The Nobel winning novelist Jose Saramago’s stories often take the shape of allegory, and in his novel Blindness he utilizes this technique on a universally grand scale. Most of the story takes place within a building where a group of...

Home is oftentimes perceived as one of the places where a person feels safest and as one of the places where one likes being most. This seems to be very straightforward, but in her novel Kindred, Octavia E. Butler complicates this concept of home by...

The Other Wes Moore is a story of two different lives, but with the same name, and how their journeys have been shaped by their decisions in the past. Through the book, there are many recurring themes. An individual’s choices has consequences, Discipline and violence,...

Suicide is a dark subject, usually avoided in every-day conversation and in Youth Literature. This is understandable. Some topics require a developed level of maturity in order to be fully comprehended. However, the darkness of a subject, while understandably deeming it a taboo topic, should...

Humans are innately social creatures who group themselves together to satisfy their hierarchical need of belongingness. Within these groups, individuals find comfort in surrounding themselves with others who share similar beliefs, values, characteristics, and goals in life. This fundamental aspect of human nature ultimately creates...

Vida, by Patricia Engel, is a story that deals with, among other things, ideas of agency, responsibility to oneself, and responsibility to others. Although the story is told through Sabina’s eyes, the drive of the story comes from the desire to learn as much about...

Throughout our world today, there is a handful of concepts upon which our lives are concretely built upon. Unfortunately, not all of these concepts are ones that are pleasant. Our lives are saturated with these concepts, whether it be within our daily lives, the books...

In the narrative essay Envy, Campbell recalls a fatherless childhood filled with anger and frustration. Campbell abhors the fact that her family is nontraditional, and Envy chronicles the emotional cataclysm that anticipates her boiling point. Though Campbell is showered in support and encouragement by a...

In his poem, Memory, Chris van Wyk explores the themes of traumatic memory, motherhood, and home, with reference to an event in the speaker’s childhood which leaves his mother severely injured. The poem begins with a description of a happy, relaxed kitchen scene. The speaker...

Explore the ways in which Plath Presents Motherhood in ‘Morning Song’ Sylvia Plath has written numerous poems portraying her views and feelings towards being a mother, some of which come across as unconventional and insensitive. Some critics argue this same opinion about her poem ‘Morning...

Written in the Middle Ages, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue begins by revealing that Wife’s plethoras experiences in marriage qualifies her to reveal the realities about marriage. Married at the age of twelve, her first three husbands were good because they were old, wealthy, and...

Double consciousness refers to the phenomenon of experiencing one’s self-awareness as encompassing what others think, thus creating a sense of identity that is divided into multiple parts. Always measuring yourself through the eyes of others. This play “Dutchman” emphasizes the idea of what a black...