Allegorically Speaking by Author Yvonne Anderson

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“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” The folk song asks this rhetorical question not because the songwriter’s looking for an answer, but to prod the hearer to think.

Another rhetorical device that’s familiar to everyone, though not always identified as rhetorical, is allegory. When used in literature, a character, object, setting, plot, or other component is used to represent something in the real world. And, like a rhetorical question, its purpose is to encourage the reader to use his noodle. 

What comes to mind when you think of allegory? Pilgrim’s Progress? Animal Farm? The Chronicles of Narnia? They all fit the bill. But I’m not sure Gateway to Gannah does.

What’s Gateway to Gannah, you may ask? It’s a sci-fi series written by yours truly. I released the third book a couple months ago and plan to publish the last title in October. Never heard of it? I’m not surprised. Few people have.

When Sandra mentioned my doing a post about allegory, my first thought was, Huh? Because, you see, I never thought of Gannah as an allegory. Its themes are all pretty straightforward, not veiled in symbolism. 

In Pilgrim’s Progress, the protagonist’s journey is a metaphor for the Christian walk. In Animal Farm, the Russian Revolution is portrayed by a coalition of animals taking over the farm and establishing pigs as the new ruling class. In the Narnia stories, a wise, powerful lion represents Jesus Christ. 

In Gannah, however, people are people, the Creator and Redeemer are exactly as named, and the Bible is the Bible. No room for misinterpretation. 

This set to me to thinking about allegory in its various forms, and now I’m finding it everywhere I look – particularly in the Bible. One example among a multitude: the nation of Israel is represented by a vine in Psalm 80:8-16 as well in the 15^th and 17^th chapters of Ezekiel. 

Sometimes, biblical history is used as an allegorical illustration. Check out Galatians 4:22-31. The Apostle Paul comes right out and says, in v. 24, that he’s pointing out an allegory in the Old Testament. Although the events he refers to in Genesis 16 and 21 are historical, they also illustrate a spiritual reality. 

In another case, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:11 that Israel’s exodus from Egypt serves as an example to those who follow Christ. Old Testament history is both fact and illustration.

It’s not just God’s word that’s full of that sort of thing; so is God’s world. How about the metamorphosis of a grotesque, crawling caterpillar into a delicate, airborne butterfly? The process pictures the death of our sinful flesh and the emergence of a perfect spiritual body in the resurrection. Or how about the falling of a seed to the ground to die, later to emerge as a fruitful plant? Great allegorical performance art enacted continually on the stage of the world.

One of my favorites is the sunrise, which portrays the return of Christ (Malachi 4:2). Did you ever stop to think that at every moment of every day, the sun is rising somewhere on this earth in declaration of the coming of the King?

Obviously, then, allegory doesn’t have to be fiction—something real can portray something else that’s equally real but on a different plane.

What does all this have to do with the Gateway to Gannah series? Gannah is pure fiction: the planet, its people, and all the events described exist only in the imagination. These fictitious things do, however, illustrate actual traits and motives of human nature as well as scriptural realities: the universal power and authority of God (portrayed in the first book, The Story in the Stars), the reliability of the scriptures above human tradition or personal experience (Words in the Wind), and the fact that our Savior’s self-sacrifice demands a response on our part (Ransom in the Rock).

So is the Gateway to Gannah an allegory? I’m not sure. Maybe you should read it and decide for yourself.

Yvonne Anderson writes fiction that takes you out of this world.

And The Borrowed Book will give you a chance to win a free copy of Book 1 in the series this Friday. See ya then!

The Story in the Stars was a Carol Award finalist in 2012. The adventure continues with Words in the Wind and Ransom in the Rock and will conclude with The Last Toqeph, scheduled for release in the fall of 2014.

Yvonne lives in Western Maryland with her husband of almost forty years and shares the occasional wise word on her personal site, YsWords. She’s been with The Borrowed Book blog for a year or two now and has coordinated Novel Rocket’s Launch Pad Contest for unpublished novelists since the beginning of time. (Or at least, since the contest’s inception.) You may connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Oh, yeah: she also does freelance editing. 

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Author Interview with Karen Witemeyer

All right, I admit it. I'm one of those weird writers who actually prefers to write with her internal editor turned on. Most authors believe the editing side of their brain impedes their creativity, but not me. Editing is actually my strength. Without it, I flounder. I don't write multiple drafts of my novels. I edit as I go, polishing each chapter before moving on to the next, and when I get to "The End," it's actually the end.

Knowing this about me, you'll understand why my writing pace is slow. My perfectionistic tendencies will not be ignored. I might work for an hour just to craft the perfect analogy to describe how my hero crosses the street. I might re-write a sentence a dozen times to smooth out the flow or search four different thesauruses/dictionaries to uncover the perfect verb to use in portraying my heroine's emotions. The right word can make all the difference.

Words not only reflect the action, but the personalities of the characters. For example, in Stealing the Preacher, Crockett Archer is a minister. The heroine calls him Brother Archer. Respectful, polite, proper. Her ex-outlaw father, however, calls him a sermonizer. Can't you hear the disdain dripping from that word? It paints a completely different picture.

While I believe selecting strong words helps an author create vivid images in her fiction, I also think we have to be careful not to take our words too seriously. This was brought home to me a few weeks ago when I was sitting in church with my kids. I usually sit between my two boys (ages 11 and 13), and we all sing together. My older children sing with enthusiasm, while my youngest is much more timid. This particular day, however, Peter was eagerly getting involved in the singing. Not so much with his voice, but with his hands. You see, he was acting out the words as he sang them. His hands were close to his lap, so I did nothing to stop him. In fact, I was thrilled that he was paying close enough attention to the words to be able to pantomime them.

We sing classic hymns at our church, and on this day we were singing Victory in Jesus.

I heard an old, old story, (Peter held his hands together like an open book.)

How a Savior came from glory (Peter pointed a finger up toward heaven.)

How he gave his life on Calvary (He shaped his fingers into a cross.)

To save a wretch like me (Peter pointed to himself.) 

The pattern continued through the rest of the verse and on to the chorus. Like the proud mother I was, I smiled at him and sang out strong. "Oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever, He sought me and bo't me with His redeeming blood; He loved me ere I knew him, and all my love is due him, He plunged me to victory, beneath the cleansing flood."

I glanced over to Peter as we neared the end of the chorus, and I saw this thoughtful look come over his face followed by a click of satisfaction as an idea formed. Have you guessed it? Oh, yes, he did. When we sang about how Jesus plunged us to victory, my son pantomimed a toilet plunger. With gusto.

Oh, my word. I was horrified and yet found it so hilarious I burst into quiet laughter while grabbing his hands at the same time to get him to quit. I tried to explain to him later that there were different meaning for the word plunge and this one had nothing to do with plumbing, but he was so proud of getting me to laugh, that I don't think he cared about the semantics.

This episode served to remind me that in my search for the perfect word, I should never take myself so seriously that I forget to have a good time. Authors get paid to play with words, after all, and the results should be fun for everyone. 

Come back Friday for a chance to win a copy of Karen's newest book, "Stealing the Preacher."

Two-time RITA® Finalist and winner of the coveted HOLT Medallion and ACFW Carol Award, CBA bestselling author, Karen Witemeyer, writes historical romance fiction for Bethany House, believing that the world needs more happily-ever-afters. She is an avid cross-stitcher, shower singer, and bakes a mean apple cobbler. Karen makes her home in Abilene, TX with her husband and three children. Learn more about Karen and her books at: www.karenwitemeyer.com. 

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