The story 'The Blue Stones' represents a genre of allegory. The allegory includes two levels: a literal and symbolic. The literal level is about ordinary life, everyday routine and so on. The symbolic level represents the moral of the story.
The story was written by Isak Dineson. She was born in Denmark and spent most of her life in British East Africa, now Kenya. Dinesen is best known for her autobiographical narration published in 1937 'Out of Africa'. Another famous book, 'Seven Gothic Tales' includes the stories set in Europe hundreds of years ago.
The story 'The Blue Stones' is short and it seems simple. The skipper named his ship after his wife, "He had the figurehead of it beautifully carved, just like her, and the hair of it gilt". His wife was jealous about his passion, she even thought that he liked the ship more than her.
During one adventure he helped the king of savages and he was bestowed by the two precious blue stones. As such, it seemed as if his ship had found eyes. The wife was jealous about these stones so much that she secretly replaced them with false stones and kept the original ones at home.
Soon after that, the wife found that her eyesight was growing worse, and she could not see to thread a needle. She was going blind; she cried, "I should have the glass taken out, and the jewels put back." She wanted to do it but it was not possible. This sailing was last for her husband. She got a letter from the Consul of Portugal, that the ship had wrecked, "And it was a very strange thing, the Consul wrote, that in broad daylight she had run straight into a tall rock, rising out of the sea."
Every reader could make their own conclusion about the moral of the story and maybe find some parallels according to their own life's experience.
Here is the text of the story:
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