Riddle Me This
You know this classic riddle? “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?”
You know the answer? A person. Babies go about on all fours (infancy) until they learn to walk, which they do well into adulthood, until old age requires them to use a cane to support themselves.
I got into an amusing family discussion about the literalness of riddles. They’re not meant to be taken literally, but there has to be enough that’s literal for the riddle to work. Metaphorical and literal work together to reach an enlightening conclusion.
But it also got me thinking about our assumptions. The convention of old age is that a person walks with a cane. But not every old person needs one, so, naturally, it’s not literal. And not every adult can walk on two legs, so, again, not inclusively literal.
Riddles, like other forms of allusion, only work when the writer anticipates what the reader knows (canes = old age) and the reader can extract the writer’s meaning. Without this collaboration, the purpose of the riddle is lost.
Keep this in mind as you write your own story. What are you expecting the reader to know? And will they know it?
Then, like any good riddle, let the reader work out your meaning.