Allegory (al’-le-go-ry): A sustained metaphor continued through whole sentences or even through a whole discourse.
I am toothpaste. I live in a tube on Oak Street. My cap is tight. Squeeze me and you’ll be rewarded with white minty goo. Roll me up at the bottom as I get old and my goo is all squeezed out. Throw me in the trash with used tissues and dental floss.
Now, you will serve to reincarnate me. My soul is already at CVS waiting among the brands—“Icy White,” “Mint-A-Dent,” “Gummer,” and “Mental Dental.” That’s me: “Mental Dental.” You can’t just buy me over the counter. You need a prescription. Dr. Leary (yes, great grandson of Timothy) prescribed it to you after your mother brought you in for a consultation. You were eating newsprint and refused to brush your teeth. It was easy to get you to quit eating newsprint. We soaked it in Habanero sauce. One bight of one shred was all it took. Remember? Your mother tied you to a lawn chair and rinsed your mouth with a garden hose for a week. That was the end of that. You haven’t bitten into a front page for months. But, the teeth were something else.
I needed to be called in as a remedy. Dr. Leary and your mother tied you to the seat of your Troy-built ride-mower. As a distraction, they started it up. You looked down at the choke and Dr.Leary smeared a dollop of “Mental Dental across you lips and teeth. You struggled, but your struggle turned into a smile with you pupils dilated, staring intently at your hand. You quoted James Brown: “I feel good.” You freed your hands and backed the mower out of the garage. You pulled it into zero turn and spun in a tight circle singing “You spin me right round like a merry-go-round, right round.” You kept going until the mower ran out of gas—almost a half-hour. Then, you got off the mower, took off all of your clothes and ran into the woods. You came back later covered with Deer Fly bites and told use about the six-armed goddess you had met when you let her out of a beautifully painted jar you had found on the ground in the woods.
It was clear that I had done job. “Mental Dental’s” ingredients had done the trick. You’ve probably guessed, psilocybin is my main ingredient, followed by morphine. Psilocybin induces hallucinations while the morphines does something else that I’m not sure of.
Anyway, the flood of drugs projects the truth of fiction through the plasma screen of your mind, it does not matter if it’s a lie about toothpaste or God. Its vivacity leaves you awestruck and invites you to read, and act out, the saga of your mind.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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