We see much of this in allegories (though perhaps, depending on how you define an allegory, they can be either good or bad, righteous or evil, or simply the use of symbolism). But what I'm talking about is that itch along the back of your spine, while you're reading, which says, 'Oh, this author's up to something here...'
There's an abrupt turn in the dialogue, or a new character enters and you don't clearly know why they're hanging out just waiting for the protagonist to show up, or there are even entire chapters dedicated to espousing a philosophy, an ideal, a creed (ahem, John Galt's speech from Atlas Shrugged anyone?), or there's a distinct sense of the story ending with a lesson to be learned, like a fable.
True, some authors have agendas and they can be quite public about their agendas. Sometimes, even an entire book is overtly dedicated to their agenda.
But don't we want to read into the texts and pull those agendas out piece by piece? Isn't a book like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four a book we keep going back to in order to reference its political and philosophical warnings? Doesn't a book like this endure precisely because it's espousing an agenda, or a set of morals, of sorts? It's shouting: "Don't go down that path, society, or you'll regret it!"
Does everybody, everywhere, who ever tells a story in any form, just have an innate moralizing organ hiding under their tongue, lacing their every word with their moral point of view?
I refer to Tolkien's bit on allegory when I confuse myself with these sorts of questions:
"I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”That's as good a rule-of-thumb as I've come by so far. I think, along with that innate moralizing organ hiding under each of our tongues, there is also an innate bullshit sniffer inside each of our noses. With practice, we can detect the whiffs of allegory, of the will to dominate the reader with our own authorial point of view—sometimes even out of our own writing.
So, the lesson at the end of my blog here is: In order to ensure discussion and debate of the work, in order to ensure multiple interpretations of the work, in order to ensure I don't cross the 'bad' allegorical line in my own work, I really ought to take my sniffer out for exercise more often.