“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

― C.S. Lewis

A lot of ink has been spilled in the pursuit of good descriptions. Anyone tasked with forming words to conjure an image or an idea has had this problem: Sitting over a blank page, with all the best intentions to form the pieces of a puzzle for a subject that one sees as a whole.

To create the puzzle, you pick each piece’s form by choosing words. You can spend a lot of time picking these, putting them in an order that helps the person on the receiving end know how to put the puzzle back together.

One of the best ways to form these puzzles is to tell stories. In fact, stories seem to appeal above more direct, prosiac descriptions for a number of reasons: They are more entertaining, and they have a clear beginning-middle-end being the two that stand out to me the most–at the moment.

Allegories are an oft overlooked way of telling a story. Here are a few reasons I am for them:

Allegories are self-conscious: They set out a vision in the qualified manner of an illustration that knows it isn’t quite the real thing.

This means: Allegories are humble. Less qualified to describe reality in total, they instead try to make a story of metaphors. With a foot in both worlds, the allegory seems to know it isn’t a direct description or a truly imaginary world.

That doesn’t stop allegories from being creative. Because allegorical metaphors are involved in interactions, the imagination gives them a depth they might not otherwise have. This has more to do with what allegories don’t say than what they do say–in my opinion.  Sparce descriptions cast big shadows, which the reader’s imagination can promptly fill, and perhaps personalise–based on their own experiences.

All of these factors make allegories an ideal way to render extremely complex matters simple, without betraying their complexity.  Like the physics professor demonstrating a highly involved concept with an illustration.

Done well, allegories can be extremely subtle. It is my personal hope that they can make a kind of come back in literature. I will therefore try and devote several future blog posts to great users of allegory.

-Jackson