Some people have criticized my writing style, so I thought I might try to explain what I was going for.
I grew up reading the Bible and I was always intrigued by parables. These are stories in which the characters are more or less stick figures. They don't usually have names, there are no physical descriptions of the characters unless it is essential to the story. Mainly the writer is trying to identify some sort of human behavior and comment on it. With parables, the reader doesn't usually make any kind of emotional connection with the characters. The characters are usually just exemplars of the type of behavior and situation wants to highlight.
I tried to write it in the parable style, but then gradually bring out the characters and their personalities and make the transition from parable into story because I wanted to have an emotional takeaway as well as a more intellectual a-ha.
Besides the Biblical parables, a lot of Aesop's fables are parables, like the story of Androcles and the Lion. Unless you're very young, you probably won't fear for Androcles when he faces the adult lion at the end. What you're expected to learn in this story, the "moral", is the point of the story.