This anecdote is a political allegory. To be a little more precise, this story is political and it’s an allegory. To be even more perfectly precise, an allegory is a representation of abstract principles by characters or figures. And the political bit is.. Well, you’ll see.
Anyway, this little tale is set in a parallel world where there are many, many people - way too many people - like in our world, but we’re only interested in four. (Why not seven billion, you ask? Because I’m the author and I like these four guys.)
The first is a man that is a fox. This manfoxthing is, at the commencement of this tale, engaged. He is in what appears to be a kitchen, and he is busy looking for something. His fox-sly face twists in a brief moment of befuddlement before it clears up in delight. A-ha! He pulls out a gun and proceeds to light the stove by shooting a bullet into it. This fox thing has a name: Mr. Metaphor.
In a different place, in a different time, but still in a kitchen, there’s another man. This two-legs is a non-descript looking workhand. He’s presumably hassled at the moment as an enormous frown creases his face. A naked side of toast is perched on one outstretched palm, while the owner of the palm is occupied looking for something. Like his sly friend from one scene past, he too finds what’s he’s looking for, and what he’s looking for is a gun, more specifically a Colt. He proceeds to use the muzzle of the Colt to scoop out a healthy chunk of butter from an open glass jar, and slowly and carefully apply it to the side of toast. This man is of Greek extraction presumably, because his name is Synecdoche.
I guess you’d say that this anecdote has a running motif - that of a kitchen - and you’d be right, because the third protagonist in this political allegory (never forget!) is also standing around in a kitchen. This person though is a woman, and before the traditionalists among you exult seeing a woman in a kitchen making a sandwich, this woman is somewhat incongruous as she’s a suit, and she’s most certainly not making a sandwich. What she seems to be trying to do is reduce a perfectly whole fruit into juice. She smiles and whips out a gun from a drawer. Placing a luscious red tomato in the sink, the suit takes careful aim at it and bullets it into healthy, if somewhat gunpowdery ,juice. This woman has a name too and her name is the seductive sounding Miss. Metonymy.
That about wraps up the tale. I say just about because it’s only the fourth protagonist that hasn’t been introduced yet, and he’s a smug bastard that only smarm-talks, but he’s a crucial piece of the puzzle here. The puzzle being of course that I haven’t made a lick of sense with the three kitchen scenes so far. Right, so the fourth man is called Mr. Irony and he’s actually a woman in a man’s clothing but that’s somewhat irrelevant to a surface reading.
Mr. Irony is a visitor from an alternate universe, where many things differ from the one that Mr. Metaphor et. al. live in, but only one that is of importance to this tale. In Mr. Irony’s strange little world, guns are apparently only used as weapons. There doesn’t exist a doppelganger for Mr. Metaphor in this incredibly perverse world that would use a gun to light a stove; nor is there an alter ego for Mr. Synecdoche that’d Colt his daily bread and butter. Needless to say, there isn’t a Miss. Metonymy-like that explosive-projectiles their morning smoothies.
Mr. Irony ponders the absurdity of using guns to do what our heroes do. Aren’t they designed to be weapons to kill? You have knives that chop vegetables and blenders that squish tomatoes into mushy pulp. Who would even compare guns to knives? Every time you see a gun you’re seeing a finely tuned life-taker. Every time you see a knife, you’re seeing something that’s an everyday kitchen tool. He smirks to himself and smugly makes a mental note to chalk off this universe as yet another universe that’s immeasurably more foolish than this own.
Now back home, Mr. Irony settles down in his couch after a long day of travel and proceeds to write a long and verbose letter to the Editor calling out the absurdity of banning guns in homes without also banning knives and blenders, that are, in his considered opinion, just as lethal.
