Cupid and Psyche as an allegory

An allegory is a representation of an abstract meaning through material forms. In the story Cupid and Psyche the term allegory is used everywhere. Cupid is meant to be desire while Psyche is the soul. Together they show/interpret what their meanings truly mean. In the first few chapters Venus became angry that people were praying to Psyche instead of her. To get back at Psyche she told her son Cupid to make her fall in love with a hideous man. Once Cupid saw her he made her his wife. "Sores iam tuae mortis opinione turbatae tuumque vestigium requirentes ad scopulum istum protinus aderunt; quarum si forte lamentationes audiveris, neve respondeas neve prospicias omnino"( chp 3 li 33-36). This shows how Cupid desired Psyche and disobeyed his mothers orders just to be with her. At the end of the story Cupid found Psyche lying on the ground outside of the underworld and he had a desire to bring her back to life. He also pricked her finger so she would not love him because she had to she could only love him if she really wanted to. When it comes to Psyche as the soul she is the part in the human body that lives on forever. It is the happiness and the sadness the good and the bad in each person. Psyche represents this by going through all the emotions a persons soul would go through in a life time. In the beginning of her long adventure everyone loved her but she wasn't happy because the oracle said that she would marry a hideous beast on the mountain top. What actually happend when she got to the mountain top was her finding herself in a serine place of solitiude. She was happy on the dewy grass that she laid on. Not only can a soul be happy but it can be sad and depressed as well. When Cupid saw that Psyche saw him he left and Psyche tried to hold on to him while he started to fly away. She fell to the ground and Cupid told her that he was not going to see her again. At this point she was very upset and couldn't move. When Psyche found out that her sisters were wrong about her husband she wanted to get revenge on them and told each one of them that Cupid wanted them as his wife and they jumped off the mountain to go to his house and they died because they hit the ground. This shows that Psyche as the soul was angry.Before this all happend and the reason why Cupid saw her looking at him she spilled hot oil on him by accident. This shows how desire can burn in the soul. So Cupid as desire was burned by Psyche, the soul. Cupid and Pscyhe eventually have a child and they name it Pleasure. "Et nascitur illis fillia, quam Voluptatem nominamus"( chp 12 li 52-53).These two meaning combined created the feeling of pleasure. When you have a desire for something and a good soul you can feel pleasure.