The Pilgrim's Progress

By John Bunyan

John Bunyan was a man who felt, above all else, the need to preach the word of God. However during 17th century England it was illegal to preach outside the auspices of the Church of England. His failure to obey this law would land him in the Bedfordshire county jail twice, first for a period of twelve years, and then later for a period of six months. Bunyan could have avoided this harsh sentence if he had simply promised not to continue his preaching, however his faith would not allow him to do so. It was during this incarceration that he would begin composition of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” a work that has come to be regarded as one of the most important works of religious English literature. First published in 1678, “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is a Christian allegory in the same vein of many such works of Bunyan’s time. It concerns the travel of an everyman named Christian who travels from his home, “The City of Destruction”, to “The Celestial City” atop Mount Zion. “The City of Destruction” is a parallel for this world and “The Celestial City” for the next. In this characterization the journey of Christian can be seen as the quest of man to escape the burden of Earthly sin and find salvation for his soul in heaven. This edition contains both the first and second parts of “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, includes an introduction by Charles S. Baldwin, and a biographical afterword.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781420976489

John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628-1688) war von Beruf Kesselflicker. Er war ein bewunderter, aber auch verfolgter Prediger, der über zwölf Jahre im Gefängnis saß. Dort entstand u. a. "Die Pilgerreise", eines der meistübersetzten Werke der Weltliteratur.

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THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

(PARTS ONE AND TWO)

By JOHN BUNYAN

Introduction by

CHARLES SEARS BALDWIN

The Pilgrim’s Progress (Parts One and Two)

By John Bunyan

Introduction by Charles Sears Baldwin

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7481-2

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7648-9

This edition copyright © 2021. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: A detail of Christian, the pilgrim of the title, in combat with Apollyon, the Destroyer, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit. Illustration by Henry Courtney Selous (1803-1890) for an 1844 edition of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, originally published in 1678. / Universal History Archive/UIG / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

THE AUTHOR’S APOLOGY

THE FIRST PART

THE CONCLUSION

THE AUTHOR’S WAY OF SENDING FORTH HIS SECOND PART

THE SECOND PART

THE AUTHOR’S VINDICATION

BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

Introduction

I. THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS AS A CLASSIC.

When we say that The Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic, we mean that generations of readers have approved it as a piece of high and pure literary art; we place it among the books that are great for all time. But as we place it so, beside Paradise Lost, beside the Æneid, we feel a certain wonder and hesitation. For The Pilgrim’s Progress has two cardinal qualities that we do not usually associate with the classics of literature: it is religious, and it is popular. Very little of the great literature in any language is religious; very little, like Robinson Crusoe and some of Shakespeare’s comedies, is popular in the full sense of being constantly loved by the great mass of readers. And we must search far to find another classic that is both the one and the other. The Pilgrim’s Progress stands almost alone among the classics in being both essentially religious and essentially popular.

True, in expressing the hopes and struggles of mankind, many great writers have touched on things divine. Divine things have a large place in the Aeneid, a still larger place in the Divina Commedia and in our own Paradise Lost. But these great poems are not so much religious as theological. They speculate on the order of the universe; they symbolize abstract truths; they even embody dogmas. The Pilgrim’s Progress differs from them sharply in being a practical guide for daily conduct, a parable of the common journey of common men. Thus it is, in the literal sense, religious; and it is almost our only religious classic.

Its popularity, again, is larger than the popularity of most classics. It has been read for two hundred years, not only by all English-speaking people who have a taste for literature, but also by thousands who have no taste for literature and who may never have thought of it as literary. It was the appeal of a common man to common men; and it has been really read and re-read, not simply heard of and admired, by plain people everywhere. To popularity of this kind there are few parallels. One thinks of Robinson Crusoe, and then halts for another instance. Popularity in some degree, of course, every classic must have had, in order to become a classic, in order to survive. But it was a small literary circle that fostered the fame of the Aeneid in its own time, and a comparatively small class that kept it alive in a strange fashion through the middle ages. We can hardly compare ancient popularity with modern, because ancient writers could hardly reach what we now call the public, for lack of the printing press. But Milton had the press. He could, in something of our modern sense, appeal to the public. Yet his very appeal for the liberty of that press reached the few, not the many; and Paradise Lost, like the Aeneid, must always be the joy and admiration of the intellectually superior. It is over the heads of the crowd. Now it is to the crowd that Bunyan spoke. The Pilgrim’s Progress is popular in the sense that it is one of the very few literary classics written of the people, for the people, almost by the people.

II. THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS AS PURITAN.

In this twofold character, religious and popular, The Pilgrim’s Progress reminds us of its country and its age. It is a product of English Puritanism. For the Puritan movement, too wide in its significance to be expounded here, was at once religious and popular, both blended in one. It was a great effort for popular government in church and state. It set itself against hierarchy and monarchy alike; it overthrew both the king and the bishops. The immediate practical result in politics was the Commonwealth, and, in religion, the spread of the congregational organization and mode of worship. These results, and the many others that followed from them, proceeded from a single, dominant Puritan principle—the independence of the individual man in the kingdom of earth and the kingdom of heaven.

The age of Bunyan and Milton was a flood-tide for England, of protest, dissent, and individual assertion in religion, and, in politics, of popular government. John Bunyan was born (1628) eight years after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, while the French Protestants were standing siege at La Rochelle, just before the German Protestants had found their champion in Gustavus Adolphus (1630), and in the very year of the English Petition of Right. He was a lad during the Civil War (1642-1646), a young man during the Commonwealth. Twelve years he was himself in prison for insisting on the liberty of preaching; and he died in the year (1688) of the declaration of William of Orange to the English people.

Puritanism is echoed sometimes in Bunyan’s very language. Conviction for sin, awakenings for sin, professors of religion,—these words of the language of Canaan were common religious speech in the thatched midland cottages at whose doors Bunyan mended pots and pans, and in the rough-hewn New England houses where his great book found quick sympathy. He speaks for the soldiers of Cromwell and of Miles Standish, much more for that unknown multitude who, though no warriors, felt the call to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. He speaks for the people that could say unabashed, man to man, How stands it between God and your soul now?

The position of such men among their worldly fellows, the feelings of each side toward the other, have never been more surely divined, never more vividly expressed, than by Bunyan. There is a company of these crazed-headed coxcombs, says Mr. Obstinate, that when they take a fancy by the end are wiser in their own eyes than seven men that can render a reason. Too precise, some peevish or melancholy man,—phrases like these continually echo what is exhibited fully in Faithful’s account of Shame and in the whole chapter on Vanity Fair. Sometimes, indeed, Bunyan seems Puritan in that less pleasing sense which brought the name into reproach. Many men of Bunyan’s day resented in the Puritans that self-satisfaction and censoriousness which are made ridiculous in Shakespeare’s Malvolio. So some readers have resented, as of the same temper, the dialogues with Talkative and Ignorance. Something unkind, something Pharisaical, is easily seen by the world in those who feel bound to protest against the world. But whether this attitude was essential in Puritanism or not, certainly it was not essential in John Bunyan. Arrogance was not one of his sins. Uncompromising as the stiffest of them all on every point of principle, he yet shows in the ground of all his work a large and positive charity. His creed was no stronger than his love.

For to say that in its religious and its popular character Pilgrim’s Progress bespeaks its time is not to limit it by its time. Every piece of literature must bear the character of its time and its place; but no piece of literature that expresses merely its own time and its own place can be admitted among the classics. Only the less significant traits of Pilgrim’s Progress can be traced to Puritanism. The words that went from Bedford jail to all Christendom{1} occasionally bespeak the Puritan; they always bespeak the genius.

III. THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS AS A PRODUCT OF BUNYAN’S LIFE.

1. The Outward Life (Biographical Summary).

John Bunyan was born of Bedfordshire villagers at Elstow in 1628. Like his father before him, he was bred to the trade of a tinker. A healthful trade, a rare trade for learning men and women, it was also a trade in low esteem. Tinkers of that time are so often classed with vagrants that we must suppose them to have yielded in many cases to the temptations of the road. Besides the education of his own eyes and ears, John Bunyan had hardly any throughout his life—little schooling, little reading, little direction of any kind. He was peculiarly a self-made man. Vivid childish dreams indicated a sensitive brain. His gift of speech appeared first in extraordinary profanity. After a little soldiering in the Civil Wars, he married about the age of twenty. Smitten with the keenest sense of sin, he endured prolonged agonies before gaining peace of mind. Then he entered into communion and fellowship with the Bedford Baptists, among whom he soon revealed his gift. Arrested in November, 1660, he was indicted at the Bedford quarter session of January, 1661, for devilishly and perniciously abstaining from coming to church to hear divine service, and for being a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this Kingdom, contrary to the laws of our sovereign lord the king.{2} Refusing to renounce the liberty of preaching, he remained in the Bedford county jail twelve years. On his release in 1672 under the King’s general declaration of indulgence, he was licensed to be a teacher of the congregation allowed by us in the house of Josiah Roughed, Bedford, for the use of such as do not conform to the Church of England, who are of the persuasion commonly called Congregational.{3} His second imprisonment, six months. (1675-6) in the town jail on Bedford bridge, was made memorable by the writing of The Pilgrim’s Progress. This was published in 1678. In the ten remaining years of his life he published, besides sermons, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682), and The Pilgrim’s Progress, the Second Part (1684).

2. The Inward Life ("Grace Abounding").

These external events give us little clue, after all, to the greatness of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan was not a man of action. The outward events of his life are comparatively insignificant. As with most really great authors, we rather understand the man from the book than the book from the man. But in Bunyan’s case there is a striking exception. The inner life, that life of the mind which is the only significant life of a great author, is not merely expressed as authors commonly express themselves in their works; it is also recorded. Grace Abounding (1666) is the autobiography of his soul. This is in truth the life of John Bunyan, and the only life that tells us why he could write for all mankind. For this book reveals his amazing faculty of vision, his power, that is, to see the invisible things of the spirit. Seeing them as it were before his eyes, he felt them as most men feel the love or the loss of a friend; he struggled to win them as most men struggle for money or fame. This makes the Puritan tinker, of a low and inconsiderable generation, great in the kingdom of heaven. Pilgrim’s Progress is at once popular and religious because its author was at once utterly a man of the people and utterly a man of God. All things were lacking in his life that might hinder direct and constant touch with ordinary men and women, with the real people of this world; and he had the courage and the faith to put all things from him that might hinder his constant touch with the other world. His expression of the spiritual world is most simple and homely because he himself was simpler and homelier than any other Englishman who ever took a pen; but it is most intense because he himself was a fellow-citizen with the saints.

3. The Preaching Habit.

These two essential traits of the man, the religious and the popular, made him a preacher; and his preaching in turn reacted upon them, developing and enhancing them to the highest. If we think of Bunyan as he thought of himself we must think of him as the preacher of the spiritual life to common men. True, his great and abiding works are not sermons; but the sermon instinct and training are behind all; and, in a larger sense, there is in all his work a certain oral character, as if the printed words had first been spoken. Speech sounded in his ears and was directed to the ears rather than the eyes of others.

Indeed, Bunyan’s preaching habit occasionally delays the story of The Pilgrim’s Progress by rather tedious sermon-heads, as in the reply to Ignorance; but such passages are not characteristic. These occasional disputations are of the age rather than of the man. They are not his own way. He was not a reasoner. He did not know how to convince men by a logical series of paragraphs. The headings and sub-headings of his sermons may be merely false framework, set up because everybody about him thought that was the way to make a sermon. The strength of his preaching was not there, but in his faculty of vision and his faculty of speech. He pictured vividly in his own mind both things and thoughts; he had a seeing imagination. And to an equally extraordinary degree he had the gift to utter what he saw and felt in words that would make his hearers see and feel too. His gift of speech was so great that he had to speak. He had to express himself. No bar could stop him; not ignorance, for he contrived to learn enough from the poorest hints; not repression, for prison merely forced him to write what he would have spoken. He might well cry in the apostolic words, Woe is me if I preach not. The faculty of vision, the faculty of spiritual emotion, above all the faculty of imparting both visions and emotions in speech, these powers appear plainly, throughout Bunyan’s work, in three corresponding qualities. First, all his characteristic work is very concrete. It is what we now call picturesque. It is full of images. Even when he explains, he habitually fells into description. As his mind habitually turned abstract ideas into images, so his speech is habitually in terms of things actually seen. All The Pilgrim’s Progress is a vision; and this his greatest work is merely the best embodiment of his constant habit. Secondly, his appeal is not to the intellect, but to the feelings. Finally, all his work is essentially oral. Most of it that was written was first spoken. Much of it was never written. And even when he wrote to be read, instead of speaking to be heard, his forms of expression are more oral than those of any other English writer except the orators. Bunyan should be read aloud. It seems as if he wrote aloud.

In the only great book that Bunyan knew is the following passage:

And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him and said unto him, There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him, but took the poor man’s lamb and dressed it for the man that was come to him. And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. (2 Samuel xii. 1-7.)

That is the way Bunyan preached; and that is the way he wrote.

IV. THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS AS A VISION.

We shall appreciate him more accurately, then, by considering in detail each of his cardinal qualities; and first, that habit of concrete and specific words which came from his faculty of vision. Remember, he says in the introduction to Grace Abounding, "your tears and prayers to God, yea, how you sighed under every hedge for mercy . . . Have you forgot the close, the milk-home, the stable, the barn . . . where God did visit your souls ?" By such terms as these the appeal is direct and immediate. They make the hearer feel by making him sea. It is so always. He makes mental states real by making them almost visible and tangible. With him a figure of speech is not merely a form of expression; it is the form of expression. He sees it in his mind; it takes shape; and as he sees it, so he utters it By these things my mind was now so turned that it lay like a horse-leech at the vein, still crying out, ‘Give, give.’{4} Or again:—

I often, when these temptations had been with force upon me, did compare myself to the case of such a child whom some gypsy hath by force took up in her arms, and is carrying from friend and country. Kick sometimes I did, and also shriek and cry; but yet I was bound in the wings of the temptation, and the wind would carry me away.{5}

These concrete, specific, figurative forms of expression are not added to illustrate or adorn. They express the thought faithfully as he thought it. For him to think was to see. His power of vision is not the mastery of a literary device; it is the development of a habit born in his brain. No one can doubt that the images in which he presents the spiritual experiences of Grace Abounding are not chosen to illustrate that experience, but are the very facts of the experience itself.

I could also, he says earnestly at the end of his introduction, have stepped into a style much higher than this . . . and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do; but I dare not. God did not play in tempting of me; neither did I play when I sunk as into the bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me. Wherefore I may not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was.

Therefore we may confidently accept as faithful, literal record the many passages such as the following, and see in them what a brain was his instrument:—

"At last, when I was as it were quite worn out with fear lest it should not lay hold on me, these words did sound suddenly within my heart: ‘He is able.’ But methought this word able was spoke loud unto me. It showed a great word; it seemed to be writ in great letters."

Remarkable as this seeing imagination is in itself, it is no more remarkable than its close associations with his gift of speech. As he thinks, he sees; and as he sees, he hears words or wishes to utter them. There is the physical basis of Bunyan’s genius, the brain that could speak so that all men might see.{6}

Grace Abounding, indeed, is in every way the best commentary on Bunyan. It even records, among his earlier experiences, one that not only typifies the mental habits which underlay his peculiar literary power, but also seems like the nucleus of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

"About this time, the state and happiness of these poor people at Bedford was thus, in a kind of vision, presented to me. I saw as if they were on the sunny side of some high mountain, there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds. Methought also, betwixt me and them, I saw a wall that did compass about this mountain. Now through this wall my soul did greatly desire to pass, concluding that if I could, I would even go into the very midst of them, and there also comfort myself with the heat of their sun.

About this wall I bethought myself to go again and again, still prying as I went, to see if I could find some way or passage by which I might enter therein; but none could I find for some time. At the last I saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a little door-way in the wall, through which I attempted to pass. Now the passage being very strait and narrow, I made many efforts to get in, but all in vain, even until I was well nigh quite beat out by striving to get in. At last, with great striving, methought I at first did get in my head, and after that, by a sidling striving, my shoulders and my whole body. Then I was exceeding glad, went and sat down in the midst of them, and so was comforted with the light and heat of their sun.

1. A Vision True to Bunyan’s Imagination.

When we thus comprehend that Bunyan’s allegory was not a literary method deliberately adopted for literary effect, but the expression by a born speaker of the images in which he habitually thought, we understand better why The Pilgrim’s Progress has been, and is still, and perhaps always will be, more popular than any other allegory ever written.{7} Allegory has sometimes been more popular as a literary form than it is now; but always it risks the loss of popular appeal when it seems artificial. The Faery Queene is a beautiful allegory, beloved by poets and by many readers of poetical sensibility, admired by every one of literary taste. Why has it never become popular? Because the Red Cross Knight and Una and Duessa and the other personages are figures delicately contrived by Spenser to symbolize certain virtues and vices, not seen by Spenser in his own mind as real persons; because the combats are shadowy and artificial, not distinct and real. But Bunyan’s images, whether of persons or of actions or of feelings, are the main facts of his life. They were as actual to him as the tools of his tinkering trade. He was a common man, speaking the common speech; Spenser was an aristocrat, speaking the language of the court. There is the other important reason for the difference. But the main reason is that Bunyan’s realization of things unseen is not made by literary contrivance, but born of reality.{8}

2. A Vision True to Bunyan’s Observation.

To his extraordinary realization of his own mental images was added an intimate knowledge of other men. Though his inner life, as has been said, determined his habits and character to a very unusual degree, though it was by far the greater part of him, yet it was not all. He was not a recluse. He was a common workman, with a family to support by a trade that took him to the doors of all sorts of common men. He was a preacher, not writing for unknown readers, but speaking to the feelings and wills of particular people. It was by the practical effort to bring peace to other men’s souls that he confirmed peace in his own.{9} He knew the people to whom he preached.{10} He counseled them as their brother and pastor. He talked more than he preached. He preached and talked more than he wrote. He dealt every day with sin and repentance, hope, despair, selfishness, fickleness, faith,—not as they are presented in books, not merely as he saw them in himself, but as he actually found them in this man and that woman. So the men and women in The Pilgrim’s Progress, though they are made by an extraordinary imagination, are made out of close observation. He made them, not out of himself, but out of the real men and women of Bedfordshire. Few novels have more convincing pieces of characterization than the episode of Mr. By-Ends or the trial of Faithful.{11}

V. THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS AS EMOTIONAL.

The second characteristic of Bunyan’s work, his power over the emotions, follows naturally from the first. He could make men feel with him because he could make them see with him. Emotional effects come from concrete expression. Abstractions and generalizations leave us cold. It is the concrete, the language of Nathan to David, that goes to our hearts.

This book is writ in such a dialect

As may the minds of listless men affect.

Moreover, Bunyan’s appeal to feeling was in another way a necessity of his nature, in that he could not appeal much to reason. His thoughts did not move logically; and he had no logical training. Ideas with him were hardly seen and followed, but rather felt and passionately held.{12} It was no course of doctrine or chain of reasons that he got from the Bible, but only a throng of texts that seemed to struggle within him. A piece of a sentence, he writes in Grace Abounding, darted in upon me; and, a few pages later:

‘Lord,’ thought I, ‘if both these scriptures should meet in my heart at once, I wonder which would get the better of me.’ So methought I had a longing mind that they might come both together upon me. Yea, I desired of God they might. Well, about two or three days after, so they did indeed. They bolted both upon me at a time, and did work and struggle strongly in me for a while. At last that, about Esau’s birthright, began to wax weak, and withdraw, and vanish; and this, about the sufficiency of grace, prevailed with peace and joy.

This is hardly an intellectual process; it is almost pure feeling.

And in a higher sense we must seek the source of his power to make others feel in the intensity of his own experience. From his inward agonies and triumph, from going down himself, as he says, into the deep, he learned how to stir men’s souls. The dark first part of Grace Abounding explains that moving power of which he writes so explicitly, though so modestly, in the last part. His power to stir spiritual emotions came from his own enlarged spiritual capacity.{13}

VI. THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS AS COLLOQUIAL.

Finally, Bunyan’s style is oral. This third quality, closely related to its concreteness and its emotional character, summing up at once its religious and its popular significance, may even be called his distinctive note. For it runs through all his expression. That his life was preaching, that much of his written work was first spoken, has already been said, and also that his strongest native impulse was speech. It may well be remembered also that even when his works seem furthest from preaching he often writes in a kind of dramatic dialogue. But, more widely, his characteristic work sounds less like writing than like talk. It is homely and familiar—and no other author seems quite so homely, quite so familiar—because it is in the literal sense colloquial. His diction follows with fearless simplicity the ways of common speech. It is not literary in the ordinary sense; it is even illiterate, for his many revisions of The Pilgrim’s Progress left it in many places incorrect; it is simply what a genius made of the actual every-day talk of the street.

1. Proverbial.

Obvious instances of the colloquial habit may be found on almost every page in his use of racy popular proverbs. They are worth collecting as picturesque summaries of the worldly wisdom of our ancestors. Some of them are still current to-day.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Every fat must stand upon his own bottom.

A saint abroad and a devil at home.

A waterman, looking one way and rowing another.

The Pilgrim’s Progress has many another; and as many more may be found in Mr. Badman.

It is ill puddling in a cockatrice’s den.

They run hazards that hunt the wild boar.

All was fish that came to his net.

Hedges have eyes, and little pitchers have ears.

The bird in the air knows not the notes of the bird in the snare.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

Like to like, quoth the devil to the collier.

These are the speech of oral tradition.

2. Homely.

Quite like it is Bunyan’s own homeliness. As for those that made boggle and stop at things, he says in Mr. Badman, and that could not in conscience, and for fear of death and judgment, do such things as he, he would call them fools and noddies, and charge them with being frighted with the talk of unseen bugbears. And again, Fluster and huff and make ado for a while he may; but God hath determined that both he and it shall melt like grease. One of the prettiest instances is as follows: Some cry out against sin even as the mother cries out against the child in her lap, when she calleth it slut and naughty girl, and then falls to hugging and kissing it. The Pilgrim’s Progress is full of such phrases; and everybody recognizes them as characteristic of Bunyan’s style.{14}

The direct homeliness and concreteness is sometimes strong at the expense of elegance.

But this consideration I then only had when God gave me leave to swallow my spittle. Otherwise the noise and strength and force of these temptations would drown . . . all such thoughts.{15} I would in these days . . . even flounce towards the promise, as horses do toward sound ground that yet stick in the mire.

Some readers are startled at gallons of blood, or disgusted at his enlarging upon the scriptural figure of vomit. For Bunyan’s style has some of the faults, as well as all the virtue, of common speech. It is rather strong than nice. But alike in its great force and its little nicety, it is thoroughly communal. It is the nearest approach in our literature to the very voice of the people.

3. Unliterary.

Thus to be as it were the inspired mouthpiece for common English speech was perhaps less Bunyan’s choice than his necessity. He hardly knew any other diction. He made literature unconsciously; for he was anything but a man of letters. Without laying undue stress on the fact that at thirty he was still an illiterate tinker, it is but emphasizing the essential character of his education to say that he was almost independent of books. When we remember how far even the most original authors have formed their styles upon their reading, we must see in Bunyan a startling exception. Not that authors learn style by copying, or that they habitually neglect common speech, for in this respect authors vary widely; but that the thoughts and expression of literary men move habitually by literary associations. But Bunyan’s mind had so extraordinarily few literary associations to work upon that it moved naturally by the oral associations of common speech. That fact, for it is a fact, explains almost by itself why his style, more constantly than any other great author’s, is thoroughly oral and popular. Undoubtedly he meant it to be so; but undoubtedly he could not, without violating all truth of expression, have made it otherwise.

(a) Hardly Biblical.

Of course Bunyan did know one book exceptionally well. He knew the English Bible. He thumbed it from cover to cover. He read it daily. He almost lived on it. He knew much of it by heart; for he quotes widely from memory. The English Bible, then, must have influenced his style. So to some degree it did. But the inference, made by most critics, that he formed his style on the Bible, is quite too large. The point is worth investigation, for the better understanding of a great and singular genius. To begin with, we should not forget that many passages in Bunyan which at first suggest our Bible do so simply because they belong to the same century. We hastily call them Biblical because they seem somewhat archaic. Now the English Bible was occasionally archaic even for its own time, because the translators deliberately retained some passages from older versions. Moreover, their translation was made seventeen years before Bunyan was born; and the language was changing more rapidly then than it changes now. But, making due allowance for these facts, we may still convince ourselves by comparison that many of the so-called Biblical phrases in Bunyan are common seventeenth-century English.

Further, we must determine whether the style of the Bible much influenced the style of Bunyan by studying just how. How does Bunyan use the Bible? In a word, he uses it, not as a literary model, but as any preacher uses it to-day,—by quotation. All his work is full of quotations, not only texts quoted entire, but phrases inserted verbatim or adapted to the construction of his own sentences. They are, as it were, sewed on rather than woven in. They are readily distinguishable from his own texture. For his own style remains distinct and different. Almost any page of The Pilgrim’s Progress will show this two-fold character. As in a mixture of oil and vinegar, the two elements mingle without uniting. When Bunyan is quoting, he is not like the Bible; he is the Bible. When he is not quoting, he is not like the Bible; he is like common speech. From the very nature of his subjects his quotations from the Bible are exceptionally frequent; but their effect on his own style is no less exceptionally small. No man of letters using the Bible so much and so exclusively could well have felt its style so little. The last thing in the Bible that affected Bunyan was its style. To him its subject was too overwhelming to leave much room for other impressions. To him it was simply the word of God. But for a few sentences of his,{16} we could hardly be sure that he was even aware it had a style.

One of the surest and most delicate tests is his susceptibility to its rhythm and other harmonies. Every fine style has its rhythms, cadences, and recurrences, subtly and almost unconsciously expressing the author’s mood. And the influence of the Bible style on other styles is clearest in this one quality. Take two instances widely different: Sir Thomas Browne and John Ruskin both echo at impassioned moments the grand cadences of the English translation of the minor prophets. But Bunyan seems rather deaf to these. His rhythms seem very slightly affected by the rhythms of the English Bible.{17} Rather they are the simpler, more spontaneous rhythms of communal emotion, the prose poetry of common feeling.{18} To put the matter simply, his style

Reviews for The Pilgrim's Progress

[ironjaw-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Insufferable. Period

[lachlanp-387269 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this on Audible.

This was a great book, a great narration, and a great allegory. I'm more familiar with the modern abridged versions so it was good to go back to Bunyan's original.

There were a couple things I found wanting though:
1. as a story, it could use some editing to tighten up the pacing. Particularly at the end, there was a lot of "discoursing" back and forth.
2. some of the discourses the pilgrims had, especially with the misguided/evil individuals they met, felt very preachy. I don't know if that's because it was how people back then told each other they were wrong, or whether as a minister, he felt it was better to get straight to the point to care for someone's soul. But it felt as if they didn't really "love" these people, possibly because Bunyan knew they were destined for Hell anyway. There could have been more friendliness in the disputes.

Besides that, I'd recommend reading it. Bunyan sprinkles in relevant biblical allusions all through it, from passing sentences to characters and places. And though occasionally his allegory falls back down to earth in a few places and uses our experiences without translating them, most of the time it depicts real things in the Christian life in a very graphic, useful way.

[mbmackay · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In 2015 The Guardian published a list of the 100 best novels published in English, listed in chronological order of publication. Under Covid inspired lockdown, I have taken up the challenge.The Pilgrim's Progress, published in 1678, is the first in the list.I was underwhelmed. It is a Christian allegory, and has remained popular and recommended (although possible less read) ever since publication. I found the prose turgid and the content nonsensical.The 17th century had Shakespeare and poetry, and I expected more of the prose fiction of the era, but the genre had not really been established. Five hundred years after the Tale of Genji, English literaure was waiting for its first novel.The 17th century was also the dawn of the Enlightenment. Newton published Principia Mathematica 10 years after Pilgrim's Progress. In that context, Pilgim's Progress seems a last echoing cry of the non-rational world.

[danielstj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A lucid story that weaves and flows its way through inception to conclusion.Recommended for everyone

[the_hibernator · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Summary: In this allegorical novel, a pilgrim named Christian travels a journey in which he loses the heavy weight of his sins, is tempted to sin again, and eventually reaches paradise.My thoughts: I’m not sure why this is the most printed book in English, other than the Bible. I love allegory generally, but this allegory beat you over the head with obviousness. Everyone and everything was given a name (like Christian) that said explicitly what the character or impediment represented. The story itself was interesting enough, I suppose, as a concept, I just wish it were more subtle. This is also not a book for non-Christians, unless they are reading for the sake of learning about classic literature.

[ecataldi-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I don't know if this is the worst book that I've ever read or if the audiobook was so atrocious that it made it into the worst thing ever. This book was a nightmare. I get it, I get it, I know it's supposed to be a Christian allegory, but listening to six hours of this (fully fucking dramatized) was hell. HELL. I wanted to bleach my ears. I couldn't handle it anymore, did Satan narrate this? This book made the Lord of the Rings trilogy look like a cake walk!! The Pilgrim's Progress was a long ass journey to heaven made by "Christian" and other people he runs into. They face all sorts of dumb shit and get into dumb trouble and make lots of dumb decisions but SOME FUCKING HOW still make it to heaven (spoiler alert). Christian loses lots of companions, walks into dumb scenarios every other page, but luckily for him, he had some faith so he made it. UGH. I hate everything. I'm glad this nightmare book is over.

[samtekoa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an abbreviated version with fantastic illustrations. Probably very good to read to children but a bit too simplistic for adults. Enjoyable none the less.

[oscarwilde87_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan was written in 1678 and can be counted among the most significant works of English literature. It is an allegory, presented as a narration of a dream, and it is divided into two parts. The first part follows protagonist Christian from the City of Destruction, i.e. this world, to the Celestial City, i.e. heaven. Christian sets out on this journey, leaving behind his wife, his children and his home, because he is weighed down by a burden. On his way, he goes through several stages and meets various persons, some of whom accompany him on his journey and some of whom try to convince him of leaving the path he is on. The characters he encounters have, as he himself, very straightforward names that show their main character trait. They can be regarded as flat characters whose name already gives away what their character is like and what their role in the story will be. Examples of such names are Legality, Goodwill, Faithful, Ignorance, Giant Despair, and Mistrust, to name but a few. The same thing can be said for the stages Christian passes through. There is the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, the Hill of Difficulty, or the Delectable Mountains. The second part of The Pilgrim's Progress relates the story of Christiana, Christian's wife, who sets out with her children and Mercy, another woman from the City of Destruction, to follow her husband's path to Mount Zion and the Celestial City.Although the book was written in 1678, the text is very easy to follow as the language is quite simple with no complex sentence structures. Bunyan's writing style is very direct, which is probably due to the fact that the book was intended for a popular and not for a higher-educated academic readership. Being a Christian allegory it was aimed at a broad audience depicting Christian life as the only true way of life. The names of characters and places ensure that there is no trouble in deciphering the allegoric meaning of the novel. Yet, I have read that Bunyan, who is said to have traveled from Bedford to London, was influenced by his personal surroundings in the description of the places in the story. Generally, the book can be approached without much background knowledge, but you probably might get more out of it with a religious background.On the whole, 3.5 stars as the second part was somewhat repetitive after having read the first one. Plus, I felt I was getting a moralizing lecture.

[martinbodek · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book wasn't bad or awful, per se, it was simply painfully dull and boring with absolutely no vested interest in what occurs with the characters. Which brings us to the characters! Look, I get that this is a biblically-woven highly religious allegory of personal salvation, that much is clear, but does the reader have to be blunted over the head with it? The lead player is named Christian? Really? Couldn't call him Bob? And his wife is Christina? You're joking, right? Pamela would've been better. The biggest surprise - and there are none - is that his children aren't named Christine, Christopher, and Jiminy Christmas. Also, did Bunyan HAVE to name everyone else exactly what they are in metaphor? I found that aggravating, and the slog-through was mighty difficult, and the sudden bursts of rhyme were ridiculous and often non-rhyming, but I'm all the richer for having read it, right? Wrong. Guess I'm going to hell.

[bayardus-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

For those too lazy to read the Bible or too dumb to form even a surface level interpretation of Christianity, there’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. The journey of the Christian spirit cloaked in the thinnest of allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress is a book in two parts, the first part dealing with a man named Christian making his way to the celestial city (heaven, obviously). Part two follows his wife Christiana making a very, very similar journey. The names are indicative of the level of both subtlety and creativity that Bunyan put into this book.

The lack of subtlety is perhaps an unfair criticism, as Bunyan was clearly writing this book for the absolute lowest common denominator, but that proves to be a problem in its own right. For instance, Bunyan writes about brothers Passion and Patience to illustrate that patience is a virtue and that rash passion is bad: this is the 1678 precursor to the kid shows that nowadays run on the Christian TV channels to teach young children how to behave. Though Bunyan litters the book with Bible quotes, this book doesn’t contain any hint of the moral complexity that the Bible often explores: these lessons are black-and-white, the completely one-dimensional characters identified as on the side of good or evil immediately once their names are revealed (Goodwill, Faithful, and Old Honest are all good, surprise surprise). Not only does Bunyan make everything as simple as possible to promote mass consumption, but he also tries to gussy up the lessons by adding action scenes throughout the journey. In part 1 Christian fights a demon, and then in part 2 no less than four giants are slain, and the beast from the Book of Revelation is driven off as well (suggesting that Bunyan never grasped any of the symbolic meaning of the Book of Revelation at all). This is the Hollywood blockbuster of its time, designed to entertain and make the ideas within palatable to as broad an audience as possible, not to challenge the reader in any way. Unfortunately, the Bible isn't something that can be reduced to this type of bland and bite-sized entertainment without losing much of what makes it great.

What makes this book so painful to read is that Bunyan’s purpose in writing it, to set out the path a person needs to follow to get into heaven, has been done so much better elsewhere. Specifically Dante’s Divine Comedy puts Pilgrim’s Progress to shame in every way that I can think of, not to mention the Bible of course. Dante’s Divine Comedy is the closer parallel, as Dante is also using the journey of a man to illustrate the necessary traits and steps for getting into heaven and what steps to avoid. Dante not only wrote of the circles of Hell, levels of purgatory, and spheres of heaven to illustrate how a person should act, he was also doing a myriad of other things as well: writing about Italian politics at the time, merging the classical myths and teachings with the Christian system of morality, writing a moving letter to his deceased first love Beatrice, redefining the Italian language, and mapping the heavenly cosmos in detail. Not only did Dante do all of this, but he also did it all exceptionally well. For instance, each of the three stairs at the entrance to the mountain of Purgatory has a specific meaning- nothing is added at random, everything is in its place. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in comparison, seems slapdash and lazy. Bunyan isn’t trying to do very much, just sketch some moral lessons that lead a soul to heaven in the least nuanced manner possible. Why is the Slough of Despond located where it is? Or the arbor called Slothful’s Friend? And why does Christian run into Atheist when he does? And why doesn’t Christiana run into Atheist at all? The answer seems to be that Bunyan decided to put those challenges where they are because that's when he thought up the lesson while writing the story, not because he had a clear concept of a soul’s journey, or that the placement was particularly symbolic, or any other good reason. He could have switched around the challenges the pilgrims faced in their journeys and nothing would have been lost. Thus, you finish Pilgrim’s Progress and feel nothing comparable to the unified vision of the universe that you get with Dante, just a bunch of disjointed lessons that are mostly mind-numbingly simplistic. It doesn’t help that Bunyan decides to go over the same journey twice, with only slightly different challenges the second time around.

Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is a story of the soul’s journey to heaven that delivers only the simplest lessons, told in an uncreative way, and which seems thrown together instead of set in a specific order for a specific purpose. Despite the action added by Bunyan the journey isn’t a particularly interesting one- it's lacking all subtlety and moral complexity- and it’s rendered even more boring by the journey happening twice. There is no reason to read this book while there are still copies of The Divine Comedy and the Bible left in the world. Your time is much better spent reading one of those- a few pages of either have more worth than the entirety of The Pilgrim's Progress.

[joshrskinner-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My first time through (dont judge me...I have been hard enough on myself!!)

Possibly my favorite book ever. It was amazing. I cannot fathom why I waited so long but I wont wait near as long to read it again. What a blessing!

[krista.rutherford · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is ancient! As an allegory of the Christian life, it still makes (almost?) perfect sense today. The second part with Christian's wife and children was kind of boring, probably because it's the retelling of the same story.

[benedict8-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a Christian book. But its principles of not getting tricked or waylaid off your chosen path as a baseball player or President. We get off our goals just as easily as a Christian apparently gets away from his or her goals in life.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I started it once and put it down. Too boring. I picked it up a few years later and found it interesting - the tedious journey no longer seemed so. A puritanical pursuit of the good.

[amerynth · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I can appreciate why John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress," an allegory of the Christian faith, was beloved by Puritans. For me, it was incredibly tedious and a 1,001 book just to try and get through.I failed in that... after it became clear the second half was going to be pretty much a retelling of the first half, I finally gave up.

[bradkautz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

By reputation John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is one of the classics of English literature, being in print continuously since 1678 and being translated into over 200 languages. In its essence it is the story of Christian faith, following a person of faith as he journeys through life until he arrives at his heavenly home. It is told from the vantage point of a dream and makes excellent use of the method of allegory. Bunyan wrote this masterpiece in two parts, the first being the story of the journey of a pilgrim, Christian, from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. The second part is the story of his wife, Christiana, and their four children taking the same journey several years later. Christiana had mocked her husband when he left and she delights in learning the details of his travel as she finds herself being led along the same road. I found Christiana's travels more compelling, perhaps due to the way in which vibrant faith was also expressed in the children.While Bunyan used allegory to tell this story everything about it comes across as something he knows first-hand, either from his own personal experience as a Christian who was jailed for his faith, or that he learned while serving as a pastor. The struggles that Christian and Christiana go through, although written over 300 years ago, are the struggles of Christians today. And so are the joys and delights that are found in the Christian life. I received this book three years ago as a gift from someone who said he read from it often. And now, having read it myself, I am beginning to understand why, and I anticipate I will follow his habit.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very shortened version designed for children, originally done in the 19th century but republished in 1939 with illustrations by Robert Lawson, the author/illustrator of Rabbit Hill, Smeller Wilson etc. which I enjoyed when young. I enjoyed his illustrations for this too, but always felt I should read the original. When I did, I decided that (at least as an adult), I really admired the dialogue more than the symbolic adventures which this version emphasized.

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The book is composed of two stories. The story of the pilgrimage of Christian is followed by a story of his wife Christiana's pilgrimage with her children. The story has similarities to that of paradise lost. Bunyan's story is tedious and boring. I cannot recommend the book to anyone but the fanatic.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This 1678 work is Christian allegory with a capital C. It may not be necessary to be a Christian to love this, but I’m sure it helps. A lot. A whole lot. Particularly helps to be a “fire and brimstone” Christian who believes humans aren’t just fallen but completely depraved and not about to make it into Heaven unless they walk one narrow path. I’m not a Christian--I’m an atheist. That doesn’t stop me from loving Dante’s Divine Comedy, also a work suffused with Christian themes--but Bunyan is no Dante. There is something very human, let alone humanistic about Dante. Wonderful stories--often about real people and historic personages such as Vergil and Brutus with which Dante peopled his Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Bunyan is much more abstract--his journey to the Celestial City is filled with such figures as “Pliance,” “Worldly Wiseman,” “Evangelist” and “Hopeful.” Dante’s a poet--Bunyan a preacher--and believe me, you can tell. Honestly I’m surprised I didn’t completely hate it, especially since I don’t like allegory that is so blatant. I read it because it’s on Good Reading’s “100 Significant Books”--and because it keeps coming up over and over in books I’ve read. It provides the title and theme for Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and the theme and structure for Alcott’s Little Women where the March sisters play at taking up Christian’s “burden.” The Introduction of the edition I read tells us that “for two hundred years, The Pilgrim’s Progress was, after the Bible, the most widely read book in the English-speaking world” and the “most widely influential book ever written in English.” From time to time I’ve heard of the “Slough of Despond,” “Doubtful Castle” and the “Delectable Mountains.” I think that kept my interest pretty keen through Part One, where Christian, taking up his “burden” of sin, climbs mountains and walks through such valleys as the Shadow of Death. Being raised a Christian as well as encountering the literary allusions to it meant I had enough of the context to keep me fairly engaged. Endnotes and footnotes and even sidenotes in the Barnes and Noble edition helped a lot in keeping the 17th century prose understandable. Without them a lot of the doctrinal squabbles between Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, Quakers and other non-conformists alluded to in the work would have slipped right on by--although the spirit of intolerance towards those of Bunyan's coreligionists who don’t agree with him didn’t need footnotes to come through. There's only one way to Heaven--Bunyan's way. You go through the Wicket Gate, with your Robe and your Mark and your Roll or you fall into Hell. On the other hand, knowing Bunyan wrote this in prison, where he spent twelve years because he refused to abandon his Christian principles, did mean that when Christian encountered monsters and beasts and mobs I knew these weren’t just puffed up imaginary impediments. Bunyan walked the walk; I had to respect that. He lived this story. That came through too.I did start finding it a slog in Part Two. That part, written years later, isn’t a continuation as much as a sequel. One where wife Christiana and kidlets follow the road already traveled; I found that too repetitive. I think I was also irked that while Christian, who abandoned his family, is able to strike out on his own, his distaff counterpart has to have a guide, Greatheart. While Christian gets to fight the monster Apollyon himself, his wife stands by while her champion slays all in their way. If all is allegory, what does that say about the weakness of women’s souls? On the other hand, this part of the story at least is more compassionate than hectoring, as pilgrims help those weaker to make the journey. I am glad I did finally read Pilgrim’s Progress, if only to better catch the frequent references in literature. I don't know that I can honestly say I liked Part One though, and I wasn't far into Part Two before I was soooo tired of this. Yet I can’t help think a lot of fantasy from The Wizard of Oz to Narnia owes a debt to Bunyan. At the least, it might give any rereads of Little Women a whole new layer of meaning...

[mumfie_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This has to be one of the most tedious books ever written. The imagery used such as the Slough of Despondency is great but that's about it. It's the second time I've read it and don't think I'll manage a third.

[clarehatt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely loved reading this! It has to be the best allegory of man's search for life and salvation. This book promises love, hope, light, healing, joy and peace. The only thing the reader must do, is find his path and then stay on it.

[nathan7c7moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read the children's version half a dozen times as a child. I believe this is the first time I have read the original... I'm sure it isn't the last.

[randystafford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The main reason to read this book is just because it was so phenomenally popular in England and America and not for a particularly novel theology.It’s short and surprisingly entertaining, especially for some of the allegorical names. The book definitely does not contain a modern, feel-good Christianity. At one time, when protagonist Christian and fellow pilgrim Hopeful are talking to Ignorance about whether his thoughts are godly, Ignorance insists they are. His heart is good because his thoughts are good. Christian lays into him and tells him that his thoughts are only godly if they match God’s thoughts and God thinks all of man’s ways are sinful. Bunyan bolsters his points with italicized quotes from the scriptures. There is a nice section where Christian outlays the psychology of the backslider. At many points, Bunyan the preacher makes his observations and arguments in a point by point format.I find the narrative structure interesting. Unlike William Langland’s Piers Plowman, this is not a single dream vision but pieced together from several sequential dreams of the narrator. I believe some have made the argument that this book served as a template for later quest fantasy narratives or fictional spiritual journeys. Certainly, its plot is sometimes surprising. Ignorance is whisked away to the City of Destruction in the novel’s last paragraph. The conversion of Hopeful, why he left Vanity Fair and his spiritual journey on the way to meeting fellow pilgrim Christian, is related towards the end of the novel rather than the expected beginning. The story starts off with Christian, fearing the imminent destruction of the world and his damnation, setting off for the City of God with a burden on his back. Bunyan starts and ends his book with a verse apology and song snatches at the end of sections summarize the moral or wisdom we are to take away.As I said, this story’s main value is getting a sense of one strain of popular Protestantism (not politically popular – Bunyan spent years in jail for preaching after Charles II took power). William Blake’s illustrations didn’t add much value for me. Unless you are a huge fan of his work, you’ll find his rather androgynous looking Christian, oddly muscled and always in blandly colored engravings, to not be terribly pretty or interesting.

[pondlife_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The classic 17th century Christian allegory.I thought this was worth reading for its literary significance and classic status. I'm glad that I read it, but I'm not sure I'll read it again.A couple of things I didn't like were:1. Christian seems to have no great connection with his family, friends or companions. He seems too quick to abandon people, and this made it difficult for me to connect with the character.2. The allegory is too direct. Yes, we all know it's an allegorical work, but it just seems too specific and everything has a one-to-one relationship with Christian theology.

[atreic · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn't really get on with this book, for three main reasons:1) An allegory for edification written in 16-mumble is not going to be a page turning plot or character driven romp. It was quite heavy going in places, and the number of times Christian spent much of the chapter telling someone what happened to him last chapter left me going 'I know! I just read that!'2) I didn't really agree with the theology that it was proposing. I spent a lot of the book wanting to clobber the author with 'there's a wideness in God's mercy'. There is one gate, and you must come in through that gate, even at the gates of heaven if you've Done It Wrong you'll be cast into Hell, and there are very precise things that make Good Christians and Fake Christians (the sections with Ignorance and Talkative make me twitch, lots). Most of these things involve constantly feeling utterly sinful and definitely having a Revelation TM. Still, 16 century protestants, it's hardly a surprise (and the fault may be with me and not the author...)3) Some of the time I was just plain confused - what are the wicker gate and scroll analogies for? [I have done some googling and looked at the Spark notes and am still confused]. The wicker gate is the Only Way to Heaven TM, and you Must have your Scroll or you won't get in (and you can drop it on the way)... for a book that is so painfully a direct analogy then I really feel I ought to know what these things are an analogy _of_!That aside, there are some lovely bits to it. The Pilgrims are not supermen - they are flawed and human, and mess up, and get back to things again, and the passage when they are trapped by Giant Despair really touched me. And it gets plus points for being the source of vast amounts of Stuff though, including 'Vanity Fair', the Slough of Despond, and even the holy text from Bujold's Borders of Infinity (It quite surprised me when I stumbled across the latter!)

[aulsmith · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I wanted to be a good Little Woman and love this book, but I didn't even get halfway through. How Louisa May Alcott, who suffered extensively from her father's neglect of his family while he pursued his own spiritual goals, could recommend this book, where the main character deserts his family in the first chapter, is beyond me.

[vibrantminds · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written in the 1600's while John Bunyan was in prison for his criticism of the "Church". The book however, supports the "Church" ... maybe he had a change of heart while in prison? It begins with the author entering into a dream where Christian foresees the destruction of his city and desires to travel to the Celestial city. He longs for his family to join him but they aren't convinced and refuse to go. Along the way he meets many different characters which try to distract him and convince him to turn back. Some of whom he comes in contact with are: good will, faith, by-ends, hope, ignorance, giant despair, etc. All of which teach him a different lesson. Eventually he does make it to the Celestial city and is welcome in. Part two is Christian's wife Christiana who decides she was foolish to stay behind and longs to join her husband. She sets off with her 4 sons along the same journey with Mercy accompanying her. They come across some of the same challenges as Christian but have more help along the way. An interesting read on the struggles in life and the desire to live with God again.

[atimco-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan is a landmark work in both Christian theology and English literature. Since its publication in 1678, it has encouraged countless Christians on their journey from this world to the next, and its impact on the literary tradition of England has been profound.Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory in the purest sense of the word; everything in the book has a one-to-one correlation with a spiritual principle. In part one, a man living in the City of Destruction becomes troubled by what he reads in a book (the Bible) and leaves his home, warning his scoffing family and neighbors that their city is going to be destroyed. He carries a heavy weight on his back and initially undertakes his journey to find a way to take it off. Along the way he meets a man named Evangelist who speaks truth to him, but not all fellow travelers are so congenial. He meets with characters with names like Mr. Worldly-wiseman, Formalist, Hypocrisy, Timorous, Mistrust, and Wanton, as well as Apollyon (an archdevil) and the Giant Despair, among others. Through a landscape of theological traps and oases Christian (for that is now his name) must make his way ever onward to the Celestial City, sustained on his travels by the Lord of Pilgrims.The second part recounts the story of Christiana, Christian's wife, who eventually follows her husband's path from the City of Destruction to eternal life in the Celestial City. In terms of sheer dramatic effect, part two is far inferior to part one; instead of fleeing her city in despair over its coming destruction, Christiana receives an invitation from the Lord of Pilgrims to join Him and her husband in His city. She takes along her four sons and her handmaid Mercy, and they are aided on their journey by a Mr. Great-heart. There seems to be less action and more catechizing in this section of the book, but there are some valuable theological refinements as well. There are some pilgrims who probably wouldn't have been considered worthy of pilgrimage in the first part, like Mr. Fearing, Mr. Despondency, and his daughter Much-Afraid. These pilgrims are characterized by fear and weakness, but they are still loved by their Lord and they too eventually come to the Celestial City.Nowadays I think there is an attitude of amused condescension that many feel toward Pilgrim's Progress because of its theological themes sticking out in plain sight under the see-through fictional covering. I know I felt that way... oh Bunyan, my dear man, you mean well but must you be so hamfisted? Can't you cover things up a little more artistically, add some adornment to your catechismic dialogues? Don't you know that straight allegory is far, far out of fashion just now? But this was before I read it, before I understood the narrative power that can come from an author being completely honest about his themes and intentions. By stripping away every non-essential, Bunyan can get down to the theology while still working within his fictional frame. The result is rich doctrine with the immediacy of a gripping story — a heady mix that is very rarely imitated successfully.And you can't doubt the man's sincerity. Bunyan knew what it meant to be persecuted; he started the book from a prison cell where he ultimately spent twelve years of his life, imprisoned for holding church services outside the bounds of the Church of England. His imprisonment was costly not just to him, but to his family. His message is given weight by his experiences — here is a man who knows what it means to be on pilgrimage through lands ruled by the enemy. Persecution is inevitable; Christians will suffer in this world. But equally true is our reward in the Celestial City, where our Lord Himself will welcome us home. What a hope, what a joy on our journey!I have said that Pilgrim's Progress is stripped down, but maybe a truer statement would be that our conceptions of the Christian life are covered in needless accretions that both complicate and hinder our journey. Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, the Valley of the Shadow of Death — these are universal places we all visit. Bunyan's characters also have their counterparts in our world. Bunyan dramatizes the Christian life not to change it or present it as something it's not, but to show us where our experience is deceptive. Things are clearer in the realm of allegory. If we have never had pilgrimage experiences like those of Christian, we ought to check that we're on the right road and that we've come in through the right gate.The language is beautiful and not at all hard to understand. It has its quaint 1678-isms, but for me they added to the flavor. In many places I just stopped to savor it. I read this with my adult Bible fellowship, and most people read a version that was updated with modern English. I wouldn't advise that. The original writing is not that difficult, and while the updated version isn't terrible, it does lack Bunyan's indefinable force of language. Also there were some odd additions in the new version, theology I agreed with but that was not part of the original text. Hmm.I had read an abridged version as a child which didn't really grab me, but now I'm a pilgrim and have had some experience of the road. And now I see how powerful this story is and why it has informed the Christian imagination for centuries. In some sections I would just stop and marvel at Bunyan's fantastic theology and fertile imagination. And it doesn't hurt that the narrative is soaked in Scripture! Of Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon said, "'Prick him anywhere, his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is FULL of the Word of God.'" I couldn't get enough of it; who knew that Pilgrim's Progress could induce late-night reading vigils? I will certainly be rereading this!In the "apology" poem at the beginning, Bunyan writes, "this book will make a traveler of thee." Indeed it will.

[andyray_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

why has my star rating gone up one notch since the other entry? simple. The quality of the publication is excellent compared to flimsy paperbacik. besides, i have learned to appreciate bunyan's allegory more during the paswt two years. i have always appreciated it, but it is one of those works that is different each time you read it. I've read it at least five times, the first time being at Pilgrim Camp where we studied it at the tender ages of 6 through 10 years old.

[schmerguls · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

869 The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan (read 28 Sep 1966) Every literate person has to read this book so I did. I kind of looked on it as a duty, and when I was finished I felt "now, I've read it."