Parables and Fables: From Symbolism to Allegory?

Parables and fables are easily confused with one another. Symbolism and allegory are similarly mixed-up in
too many students' minds. Here's the difference.

In common parlance, a parable is a story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically some religious
principle, moral lesson, psychological reality, or general truth. Rather than using abstract discussion, a parable
always teaches by comparison with real or literal occurrences--especially "homey" everyday occurrences a wide
number of people can relate to. The word parable comes from Greek term parábol≠ (pará means "beside," plus
bol≠, which means "a casting, putting, throwing, turning"), which the Romans called parabola in classical rhetoric.
Well-known examples of parables include those found in the synoptic Gospels, such as "The Prodigal Son" and
"The Good Samaritan." In some Gospel versions, the parables are announced with the phrase, "The Kingdom of God
is like . . . ." Technically speaking, biblical "parables" were originally examples of a Hebrew genre called meshalim
(singular mashal), a word lacking a counter-part in Greek, Latin or English. Meshalim in Hebrew refer to
"mysterious speech," i.e., spiritual riddles or enigmas the speaker couches in story-form. It is only in the Greek New
Testament that these meshalim are conflated with allegorical readings. Non-religious works may serve as parables as
well. For example, Melville's Billy Budd demonstrates that absolute good --such as the impressionable, naïve young
sailor--may not co-exist with absolute evil--the villain Claggart.

Fable: A fable is also a brief story illustrating a moral. Unlike the parables, fables often include talking
animals or animated objects as the principal characters. The interaction of these animals or inanimate things reveals
general truths about human nature, i.e., a person can learn practical lessons from the fictional antics in a fable.
However, the lesson learned is not allegorical. Each animal is not necessarily a symbol for something else. Instead,
the reader learns the lesson as an exemplum--an example of what one should or should not do. The sixth century
(BCE) Greek writer Aesop is most famous as an author of fables, but Phaedrus and Babrius in the first century (CE)
expanded on his works. A famous collection of Indian fables was the Sanskrit Bidpai (circa 300 CE), and in the
medieval period, Marie de France (c. 1200 CE) composed 102 fables in verse. After the 1600s, fables increasingly
became common as a form of children's literature.

Symbolism versus Allegory:

A symbol is a word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level.
Symbolism is the act of using a word, place, character, or object in such a way. For instance, consider the stop sign.
It is literally a metal octagon painted red with white streaks. However, everyone on the road will be much safer if we
understand that this object also represents the act of coming to a complete stop--an idea hard to encompass briefly
without some sort of symbolic substitute. An object, a setting, or even a character in literature can represent another,
more general idea. Note, however, that symbols function perfectly well in isolation from other symbols as long as
the reader already knows their assigned meaning. Allegory, however, does not work that way; allegory requires
symbols working in conjunction with each other.

An allegory involves using many interconnected symbols or allegorical figures in such as way that in nearly
every element of the narrative has a meaning beyond the literal level, i.e., everything in the narrative is a symbol that
relates to other symbols within the story. The allegorical story, poem, or play can be read either literally or as a
symbolic statement about a political, spiritual, or psychological truth. The word allegory derives from the Greek
allegoria ("speaking otherwise"): The term loosely describes any story in verse or prose that has a double meaning.
This narrative acts as an extended metaphor in which the plot or events reveal a meaning beyond what occurs in the
text, creating a moral, spiritual, or even political meaning. The act of interpreting a story as if each object in it had
an allegorical meaning is called allegoresis.

If we wish to be more exact, an allegory is an act of interpretation--a way of understanding--rather than a genre
in and of itself. Poems, novels, or plays can all be allegorical. These can be as short as a single sentence or as long as
a ten-volume book. The label "allegory" comes from an interaction between symbols that creates a coherent
meaning beyond that of the literal level of interpretation. Probably the most famous allegory in English literature is
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), in which the hero Everyman flees the City of Destruction and travels
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, and finally arrives at the Celestial City.
The entire narrative represents the average human soul's pilgrimage through temptation and doubt to reach salvation
in heaven. Other important allegorical works include mythological allegories like Apuleius' tale of Cupid and
Psyche in The Golden Ass and Prudentius' Psychomachia. More recent, non-mythological allegories include Swift's
Gulliver's Travels, Butler's Erewhon, and George Orwell's Animal Farm.

The following illustrative passage comes from page 22 of J. A. Cuddon's Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary
Theory, 3rd edition. (Penguin Books, 1991). I have Americanized the British spelling and punctuation:

To distinguish more clearly we can take the old Arab fable of the frog and the scorpion, who met
one day on the bank of the River 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 promises exchanged, they crossed the
river. On the far bank the scorpion stung the frog mortally.
"Why did you do that?" croaked the frog, as it lay dying.
"Why?" replied the scorpion, "We're both Arabs, aren't we?"
If we substitute for a frog a "Mr. Goodwill" or a "Mr. Prudence," and for the scorpion "Mr.
Treachery" or "Mr. Two-Face," and make the river any river and substitute for "We're both
Arabs!.!.!." "We're both men . . ." we turn the fable [which illustrates human tendencies by using
animals as illustrative examples] into an allegory [a narrative in which each character and action has
symbolic meaning]. On the other hand, if we turn the frog into a father and the scorpion into a son
(boatman and passenger) and we have the son say "We're both sons of God, aren't we?", then we have
a parable (if a rather cynical one) about the wickedness of human nature and the sin of parricide.