Certain allegorical implications in John Steinbeck's major novels

Allegory is a rhetorical device which is used and understood differently among literary critics. Recent assessments of the term take it to refer to a literary work which operates on at least two levels of meaning and contains a sustained structure of figurative or symbolic ideas, embodying a doctrinal truth. When a new narrative is patterned upon an old, familiar story, the theme and meanings of the new story are figuratively informed by the earlier tale. The old story may be written or unwritten, but the new story is allegorical if the old story exerts a pressure of figurative predetermination upon the work. Many of John Steinbeck's novels are patterned upon something that happened in the Bible, literature, myth, legend, or the history of man. By employing parallels and analogies to familiar stories, Steinbeck initiates, reinforces, or enlarges his basic underlying themes, as he reiterates some statement about the human condition. In this study the sources of his allegorical materials are divided into three groups—the Bible, metaphysical creeds, and pagan cults; literature, myth, and legend; and recurrent patterns in human life. [...]English, Department o