Fantasy Fiction as Metaphor

Once upon a time, I wrote fantasy novels.  I mentioned this in my first blog post on this blog.  I have two fantasy novels and plotlines that will never be completed because they ceased to be part of my identity after my baby died.  I moved on to LDS fiction because I can deal explicitly with topics meaningful to me such as mourning and healing.  

However, fantasy is my home base.  One day, I would like to go back.  But like mine was, so much of fantasy literature is simply about story and sometimes characters.  Its charm for so many, as it was for me, is in its escapist quality.  It takes one away from regular life.  But since my life has been altered so drastically, I don't see the point in spending the kinds of hours it takes to write a novel simply to tell a story that doesn't mean anything or change lives.  For me, genre fiction of any sort, particularly fantasy, science fiction, or adapted fairy tale, ought to be a metaphor for the human condition.  

For instance, if a character's struggles with his super or magical powers aren't a metaphor for disability or strange gifts or even simply differences from others, it doesn't mean much to the reader or audience.  In "Frozen," Elsa's ice power seems to me to be a metaphor for disability, which causes her isolation as well as her family's.  When one reads the movie like that, it can have so much more universal meaning.  Until I can tell a fantasy/science fiction/superhero/fairy tale story that brings in genre as a mode to share meaning and make a statement or tell an allegory, I don't see the point in going there.  

Oral tales told by generations from one generation to the next were all about reflecting the human condition.  Yet so many of our modern stories just don't.  They tell a story for the story's sake.  A lot of people like that kind of story, but I find I can't bring myself to write them anymore.  I don't want a fan to come up to me and rave about my story and what a great writer I am.  I want someone to come up to me and tell me how my words changed their life, helped them feel understood, etc.  If I'm going to go the route of these genres again, it will be because I have something meaningful to say through these vehicles.  Until then, I will stick with this foreign language [to me] of realistic fiction.