Stories That Speak

I love symbolism and allegory in literature.

I remember once explaining the symbolism in Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” when a student asked, “How do you know Poe really intended to use symbolism here? How do you know he wasn’t just strung out on drugs?”

(I loved those times when my students became engaged in the lesson!)

Well, I don’t have first-hand knowledge of why Poe chose seven rooms and seven colors in his “Red Death” short story, but most of the commentaries I studied agreed on his symbolism.

I admit to using symbolism in one of my soon-to-be-published children’s stories. In fact, I intentionally wrote about a lion that symbolizes my mother. My story may appear to have one meaning on the surface but another meaning to those who choose to hear it.

According to A Handbook to Literature by C. Hugh Holman, an allegory is “a form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, either in prose or verse, are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. Thus, it represents one thing in the guise of another.”

In other words, my story about a loving lion is really a story about my mother.

Sometimes stories shout to us, other times they speak with a still, small voice, and sometimes they may remain silent. However, the message is there, like Biblical passages that loudly speak to us on one occasion and remain silent on another. God has inspired the words, and we receive the inspiration in various ways at various times.

The Enchanted Symphony, written by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton, has spoken to me as an allegory–maybe not the way the authors intended, but I choose to believe the message I received was the one intended for me.

On the surface this book tells the story of a village that discovers a way to overcome sadness during difficult times. According to the “Authors’ Note,” this story was written in response to the 2020 pandemic that affected our entire world. Andrews and Hamilton use a mysterious fog as a parallel to the virus.

“While our purple fog may evoke the pandemic, to us, it symbolizes something larger: the creeping distractions that can prevent us from appreciating all that matters most. Which, for us, has always been family, community, nature, and the arts.”

In this story the people of the village lose their togetherness. They allow the mysterious fog to surround them with melancholy. The fog sadly silences their music.

However, in the end a young boy and his father bring back the music, and the village becomes once again enchanted by the symphony.

“And the boy, the maestro, and the townspeople understood that if they remained faithful to all that matters most, nothing could darken their days again.”

This story speaks to me as an allegory that parallels our world today. We have allowed social media and technology, like a fog, to monopolize our hours. Many of us have lost our togetherness.

We rationalize that we don’t have time for Sunday school and church and Bible studies. We no longer visit with extended family. We often “go through the motions,” as one of my students used to say.

Many of us allow our political or religious or personal views, like a dense fog, to break those connections we once held so dear.

If we think back in history to events like Pearl Harbor or 9-11, our country fought through the fog, strengthened its connections, and came together in faith. I pray that we will not allow differences today to separate us from our friends, our families, and our communities of faith.

Like the message in The Enchanted Symphony, we need to be God’s audience so that His orchestra can inspire us and lift our spirits. His music is there if we choose to listen. His stories, as well as those He inspires others to write, can speak to us if we choose to listen.

On a recent dreary, rainy morning, I was editing my picture book, my allegory about my mother. As I turned to a passage about shafts of light warming the lady lion’s body, the rain stopped for a moment; and shafts of light came through my office window. When I turned to the next page about chirping birds, I heard birds loudly chirping outside my window.

Kathy Lee Gifford might call these moments “Godwinks.” I believe God was speaking specifically to me, and I chose to listen.

As an English major in college and a lifelong high school English teacher, I was always amazed at the often-hidden messages in literature like Orwell’s Animal Farm, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Like a few of my students, I often had a hard time seeing the symbolism. Some of the stories simply didn’t speak to me. In hindsight, however, I think it’s possible that I wasn’t listening.

I’d like to think I have better hearing now that I am older and wiser. Parables and psalms and proverbs certainly speak to me differently as an adult than they did when I was a child.

Thomas C. Foster tries to answer the question “Is That a Symbol?” in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor:

“Is that a symbol? Sure it is. That’s one of the most common questions in class, and that’s the answer I generally give. Is that a symbol? Sure, why not. It’s the next question where things get hairy: what does it mean, what does it stand for? When someone asks about meaning, I usually come back with something clever like, ‘Well, what do you think?’ Everyone thinks I’m either being a wise guy or ducking responsibility, but neither is the case. Seriously, what do you think it stands for, because that’s probably what it does. At least for you.”

Again, sometimes stories shout, sometimes they speak quietly, sometimes they remain silent.

I encourage you to “chew upon,” as Shakespeare would say, a chapter from the books of Psalms or Proverbs. Turn off any distracting devices and allow the passages to speak to you. Let the fog lift and listen with your heart. Don’t be disappointed if the story doesn’t speak to you right then.  Maybe its voice is supposed to be silent at the time you are reading it. You will still have read a good story, and perhaps a seed will have been planted.

“Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.”—Stephen King

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”—Robert Frost

“The earth has music for those who listen.”—William Shakespeare

“Word of God, speak. Would You pour down like rain, washing my eyes to see Your majesty.”—Pete Kipley and Bart Millard

1 Corinthians 13:12; Jeremiah 15:16; Psalm 119:105; 1 Kings 19:12