Kippen is an educator and specialist on British colonial literature and twentieth-century South African fiction.. In the following essay, he discusses "Sorrow-Acre" as an allegory.
Like fable, allegory describes one thing-usually something quite specific-to talk about something else that shares similar features or characteristics. So, for example, Aesop's fable "The Tortoise and the Hare" isn't really "about" a tortoise or a hare; instead, it is about plodding perseverance and mercurial quickness-the tortoise and the hare are merely physical manifestations of these moral attributes. Similarly, Dinesen's "Sorrow-Acre" is neither about a young man named Adam nor about the fate of the widow Piil. These characters are representations of -or standing in for-what turns out to be a complex use of history. Unlike fable, however, allegory rarely presents a clearly discernible moral. While "slow and steady wins.....
