Allegory
In classical literature Plato and Ovid wrote allegories. Dante Alighieri wrote allegories in The Divine Comedy. In the Middle Ages Everyman was a morality play. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress tells the story of a man trying to lead a Christian life. Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, which tells about the strange customs of (made-up) faraway countries, but he was really criticizing things about his own country, the United Kingdom. Animal Farm by George Orwell is another example of an allegory, this time of the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin's era and the Russian Revolution. Some of the characters can be directly linked to figures during that time.