Why Should We Read Allegory?

The danger with metaphors is that they can be either misinterpreted or not interpreted at all. Aristotle taught us that thinking in metaphor was the highest level of thought, and he is right. The majority of people will either ignore the metaphor or take the metaphor literally. It's difficult to wrestle with abstract thoughts, full stop. But abstract thoughts clothed in a disguise can be helpful to some and more difficult to decipher for others. How do we read allegory? Well, first we unpick what the disguised message is, what's the real story for which this surface story is just dressing? And the next we extrapolate from both stories, the disguised and the disguise, we extrapolate the story that