One of the many questions that is useful to ask when creating a work of art or assessing its value is, What is its purpose?

Whether one is in the process of constructing a narrative, telling a story for public consumption, or evaluating its effectiveness, one must be acutely aware of its implicit aims, rhetorical goals, artistic conceits, diversionary objectives, and/ or intellectual pretensions.

Once one is clear about the story's intended function, one is better equipped to select the aesthetic strategies best suited to escort the narrative to full fruition and/ or assess the ultimate value of the final product.

Myth and Parable represent two distinct modes of storytelling, each with their own fundamental objectives and inherent stratagems. And while their differences may sometimes be subtle, they carry profound implications for the story's design and final impact on audiences.

MYTH

In the modern idiom, we often use the word Myth to describe something that is false or suspect: “That is a myth!”—the implication being that the story being told is, at best, misleading or misunderstood, or, at worst, untrue, a lie.

Myth is also often defined as a story accepted by an ancient people that purports to explain certain natural, spiritual, religious, or moral/ ethical phenomena but which is fundamentally untrue.

But for the purposes of this examination, we will define Myth as a story told that is designed to illustrate the general, timeless, and universal truths of the human condition—truths about ourselves, our human interactions, our place in the universe, and the myriad variables that influence our moral foundations and ethical choices. A Myth explores the things about our world that are fixed, stable, unchanging. The things that ultimately define us as sentient, feeling, and curious beings.

A lie is a story that is designed to deceive.

A Myth is a story that is designed to illuminate.

PARABLE

A Parable, on the other hand, is a story told to make a rhetorical point, or pose a rhetorical question. In other words, it contains a conspicuously didactic component that is designed to lead the audience to a particular point of view, or alternate perspective, that might inform moral or ethical choices with a specific end in mind.