Allegory
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities: Allegory 1 key example

Definition of Allegory

An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The Tortoise and The Hare" is... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Woodman and Farmer:

Dickens opens the novel with the allegory of the Woodman and the Farmer:

[…] rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees […] already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and knife in it, terrible in history […] there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire […] which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But, that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently.