THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA as an Allegory
Allegory is a literary device by which characters and actions are given two levels of meaning; one primary, literal, or ordinary, and the other secondary, symbolic and beyond the bounds of the ‘physical’ text. Allegory has its origin in Greek literature where the major schools of thought premised their arguments on ‘poetry [a term used to refer to all genres of literature] as an imitation.’ Between Aristotle and Plato, for instance, there is no disagreement about the conception of poetry as a pure imitation. The disagreement only results in delineating the function, purpose and position of poetry vis-à-vis the ideal state. Conceiving poetry as an imitation brings us to the question of interpretation. Since, in this early time, a poet was conceived of as ‘an interpreter of an interpreter’ (as propounded by Plate in his Theory of Forms), then the message he would interpret should be in tandem with the exact message being interpreted. With this, the firm link between the ‘inside’ and ...
