【正文】 by other means. When a metaphor performs this function, it is behaving as a symbol. But a symbol differs from a metaphor in that a metaphor evokes an object in order to illustrate an idea or demonstrate a quality, whereas a symbol embodies the idea or the quality. Allegory An allegory is a story in which persons, places, actions, and things are equated with meanings that lie outside of the story itself. Thus it represents one thing in the guise of another— an abstraction in the form of a concrete image. A clear example is the old Arab fable of the frog and scorpion, who me one day on the bank of the Nile, which they both wanted to cross. The frog offered to ferry the scorpion over on his back, provided the scorpion promised not to sting him. The scorpion agreed so long as the frog would promise not to drown him. The mutual promise exchanged, they crossed the river. On the far bank the scorpion stung the frog mortally. “ Why did you do that?” croaked the frog, as he lay dying. “ Why?” replied the scorpion. “ We ’ re both Arabs, aren’ t we?” If we substitute for the frog a “ Mr. Goodwill” and for the scorpion “ Mr. Treachery” or “ Mr. Twoface” , and we make the river any river, and for “ We’ re both Arabs” we substitute “ We’ re both men,” we can make the fable into an allegory. In a simple allegory, characters and other ingredients often stand for other definite meanings, which are often abstractions. We have met such a character in the last chapter: Faith in Hawthorne’ s “ Young Goodman Brown.” A classical allegory is the medieval play Everyman, whose protagonist represents us all, and who, deserted by false friends named Kinddred and Goods, faces the judgment of God acpanied only by a faithful friend called Good Deeds. In John Bunyan’ s Pilgrim’ s Progress, the protagonist, Christian, struggles along the difficult road towards salvation, meeting along the way with such persons as Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who directs him into a fortable path (a wrong turn), and the resident of a town called Fair Speech, among them a hypocrite named Mr. Facingbothways. One modern instance is Gee Orwell’ s Animal Farm, in which (among its double meanings) barnyard animals stand for human victims and totalitarian oppressors. 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 or the significance they bear. Symbol differs from allegory, according to Coleridge, in that in allegory the objective referent evokes is without value until it acquires fixed meaning from its own particular structure of ideas, whereas a symbol includes permanent objective value, independent of the meanings that it may suggest. In a broad sense, all stories are symbolic, that is, the writer lends the characters and their actions some special significance. Of course, this is to think of symbol in an extremely broad and inclusive way. For the usual purpose of reading a story and understanding it, there is probably little point in looking for symbolism in every word, in every stick or stone, in every striking fo a match, in every minor character. But to refuse to think about the symbolic meanings would be another way to misread a story. So to be on the alert for symbols when reading fiction is perhaps wiser than to ignore them. How, then, do we recognize a symbol in fiction when we meet it? Fortunately, the storyteller often givens the symbol particular emphasis. It may be mentioned repeatedly throughout the story。personify the vanishing aristocracy of the South, still maintaining a black servant and being ruthless betrayed by a moneymaking Yankee. Sometimes a part of a character’ s body or an attribute may convey symbolic meaning, for example, a baleful eye in Edgar Allan Poe’ s “ The TellTale Heart.” 4. Symbol used in works of fiction is the symbolic act Another kind of symbol monly employed in works of fiction is the symbolic act: an act or a gesture with larger significance than its literal meaning. Captain Ahab in Melville’ s MobyDick deliberately snaps his tobacco pipe and throws it away before setting out in pursuit of the huge whale, a gesture suggesting that he is determined to take his revenge and will let nothing to distract him from it. Another typical symbolic act is the burning of the barn by the boy’ s father in Faulkner’ s “ Barn Burning” : it is an act of no mere destroying a barn, but an expression of his profound spite and hatred towards that class of people who have driven his family out of his land. His hatred extends to anything he does not possess himself and, beyond that, burning a barn reflects the father’ s memories of the “ waste and extravagance of war” and the “ element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring” in his being. 5. A symbol is a trope In a broad literary sense, a symbol is a trope that bines a literal and sensuous quality with an necessary or suggestive aspect. However, in literary criticism it is necessary to distinguish symbol from image, metaphor, and, especially, allegory. An image An image is a literal and concrete representation of a sensory experience or of an object that can be known by one or more of the senses. It is the means by which experience in its richness and emotional plexity is municated. (Holman and Harmon, A Handbook to Literature, 1986) Images may be literal or figurative, a literal image being one that involves no necessary change or extension in the obvious meaning of the words. Prose works are usually full of this kind of image. For example, novels and stories by Conard and Hemingway are noted for the evocative power of their literal images. A figurative image is one that involves a “ turn” on the literary meaning of the words. For example, in the lines “ It is a beauteous evening, calm and free。 it may even be indicated in the title (“ Araby,” “ Barn Burning,” “ A Clean, WellLighted Place” ). At times, a crucial symbol will open a story or en