Allegory vs plotline

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I'm just wondering if this is an autistic thing, but how good are you at picking up on allegory vs figuring out a plot in a murder mystery or something like Jonathan Creek.

For me Animal Farm is a fictional tale about talking animals, it would never in a million years occur to me that this might be a critique of Stalinism. I am spectacularly useless at detecting allegory.

But with the 'who dun it' types of fiction I can very rapidly figure it out because practically all writers use the same formulaic approach to dropping clues with the occasional bit of misdirection.


Does this ring true for anyone else or is just me?

I've never read murder mysteries, so I have no idea how good I'd be at figuring out the plot lines.

Up until I was about 20 I was terrible at picking up on allegory (so terrible that I would always conclude it was BS and couldn't believe that stories contained allegorical metaphors--I just couldn't see it). I have no idea what changed, but I think that nowdays I'm "okay" at picking up on allegory....sub-par, but not absolutely terrible at it.

I think the ability to recognize and interpret metaphors grows in general as people become more experienced. This may be because we've been told what all the popular metaphors are and so we just fit them into one of those categories.. but I think also that it's simply an ability that must be learned and developed like everything else.

I rarely get allegory.
Even when someone explains it to me, I still struggle to see it.

My ability to figure out plot lines varies.