What is allegory?

allegory (AL‐eh‐GOR‐ee): a narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. Allegories are written in the form of fables,parables, poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre. The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that has characters a setting, as well as other types of symbols, that have both literal and figurative meanings. The differenceb betweenan allegory and a symbol is that an allegory is a complete narrative that conveys abstract ideas to get a pointa cross, while a symbol is a representation of an idea or concept that can have a different meaning throughout a literary work (A Handbook to Literature). One well‐known example of an allegory is Dante’s The Divine Comedy. In Inferno, Dantei s on a pilgrimage to try to understand his own life, but his character also represents every man who is in search of hisp urpose in the world (Merriam Webster Encyclopedia of Literature). Although Virgil literally guides Dante on his journeyt hrough the mystical inferno, he can also be seen as the reason and human wisdom that Dante has been looking for in hisl ife.