Allegory is a form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative carry meanings that lie outside the narrative itself.  It thus represents one thing in the guise of another – an abstraction in a concrete image.  Allegorical characters are usually personifications of abstract qualities; the action and the setting are representative of the relationships among these abstractions.  Allegory attempts to evoke a dual interest:  one in the events, characters, and setting presented, and the other in the ideas they are intended to convey and the significance they bear. 

For example, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) allegorizes the Christian doctrine of salvation by telling how the character Christian, warned by Evangelist, flees the City of Destruction and makes his way laboriously to the Celestial City; enroute, with characters with names like Faithful, Hopeful, and the Giant Despair, he passes through the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, and others.  Any passage from this work indicates the nature of an explicit allegorical narrative. 

DSE students of Literature in English should ask themselves to what extent we can read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as an allegorical novel?