What purposes can an allegory serve to a story?

Question

I see a lot of films using allegory. For example, a scene from a movie can be a Biblical allegory of Mose crossing the sea. But rarely do they seem to do anything with it. It's like the allegory added doesn't really serve a purpose. Is it possible that an allegory is added just for the sake of it without serving some grand narrative purpose?

Answer 1

Hide the real meaning
In some situations it can be hard to discuss a subject. Perhaps because they're taboo or because your dictatorial government doesn't like criticism. In those cases, you can try to use allegory to talk about such subjects in a slightly hidden way in order to avoid censure (or being sent to the gulag).

Make an abstract concept more accessible
Some concepts are hard to explain. Using an allegory may make it more accessible. For example by changing something from a world-wide, decade-long scale to something that happens within a household over a few weeks - a scale that humans can understand.

A call out
You might want to make a call out to a cultural movement or influential books or something else that exists outside of your story but is important to you. Using an allegory allows you to do that without having to step out of your fictional world in a jarring way.

Make people feel clever
When you use an allegory there's a second meaning to the story, and people that discover it may feel clever for doing so. People like feeling clever. People will like you for making them feel clever.

I doubt this list is exhaustive, but this is what came to mind for me.

Answer 2

An allegory used in a single scene most likely serves no grand purpose other than helping the audience understand what the scene is trying to convey (*). In a sense it is an extreme form of showing and not telling.

Why is so much effort put in some allegory to convey a concept that is not used in the narration?

1. Artistic licence.
2. It could just be pareidolia: finding allegories when there are no allegories, as discussed in another question.
3. You could have missed the point, and in fact there is an underlying theme throughout the whole arc and the allegory is just one of many references to it.
4. The concept may be relevant for that scene alone and irrelevant elsewhere. Often a scene is used to establish traits of a character and once that is set, there is no need to get back to it. An allegory could help clarify the specific moral trait that is being presented.

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(*) This is very well supported by the definition of allegory itself:

As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.

^{Source: wikipedia}

a story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation.

^{Source: Merriam webster}

A story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

^{Source: Oxford Reference}

Answer 3

the question in the title:
"What is the purpose of an allegory?"

Broadly, an allegory contributes to the narrative structure by providing context. Allegories are usually subtext, but may be diagetic (like a play-within-a-play).

The purpose is to enrich the story, situation, or characters with a comparison that is not necessarily explicit within the narrative, but can be recognized for their shared themes, conflicts, character-arcs, plot beats, etc.

Allegories can also create a pleasing sense of structure in non-narrative ways, such as repeated patterns, numbers, or symmetry. They may tackle real life events as a form of social commentary. They may invoke existing art, media, literature or mythos as a jumping off point to expand on the theme, or transpose a grand story to a new smaller context.

Working as intended, allegories should enrich the work by adding context and structure. They are an intentional narrative element, but as subtext they are usually not overt. Subtlety is subjective – some allegories are 'revealed' like a plot twist while others go unexplained.

the question in the body:
If an allegory is meaningless, is it still an allegory?

Hard to say without an example, but I'd just call that a 'reference', not an allegory.

A cultural reference that offers no structure or narrative purpose might be signaling to a specific demographic or generation – invoking nostalgia, populism, or esoterica to gain reader trust as a member of their 'tribe'.

If it didn't go anywhere, the reference may also just be a clumsy attempt to be artsy, using a non-sequitur to juxtapose thematic depth that is not supported by the story (like opera music during a violent murder, it is an implied depth through contrast, but not particularly meaningful).