The most famous of all allegories is the Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato compares unphilosophical people to prisoners who, having spent their entire lives in a cave, are unable to imagine the world beyond.

How exactly do allegories work? An allegory (Greek, "a speaking about something else") is a complete and cohesive narrative, for example, a myth, or George Orwell’s Animal Farm, that seems to be about one thing but is actually about another. Or, to put it differently, it is a story with two (or more) meanings: a superficial, literal meaning, and a deeper, figurative one.

Allegories are often described as "extended metaphors," so one way of understanding the allegory is by understanding the smaller metaphor. Whereas an allegory is a complete narrative that seems to be about one thing but is actually about another, a metaphor is a sentence or short segment that equates two seemingly unrelated things. For example:

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

The first sentence consists of two metaphors (“I am the rose of Sharon” and “I am the lily of the valleys”), and the second sentence consists of a simile.

What is the difference between a metaphor and a simile? In two words, not much. Whereas a metaphor says that something is something else, a simile says that it is like or as something else.

Simile might be considered a type of metaphor, as might also analogy, which involves drawing a comparison for the purpose of explaining or clarifying an idea, for example, if I say,........

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