The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (novel #210)

Full title: The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to that which is to Come Delivered under the
Similitude of a Dream

 

…strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. ~ Matthew 7:14

 

The Pilgrim’s Progress is a Christian Allegory, perhaps the Christian Allegory written by 17th Century English Puritan preacher and writer John Bunyan. It was written, or at least started during Bunyan’s imprisonment for preaching and assembling without sanction of The Church of England.

 

The omniscient narrator tells of his dream, wherein the pilgrim, Christian, flees his home in the City of Destruction in search of The Celestial City. It is slow going as Pilgrim doesn’t precisely know the way and carries a heavy burden. He meets Evangelist, who directs him to the Wicket Gate, where he meets the gatekeeper, Goodwill. After entering, he is released of his burden, though there are many pitfalls, enemies, false friends, and some true yet to be encountered.

 

Of the many places Christian must pass through, some are fearful dangers, others are beguiling diversions; some are refining fires and some true delights.

 

Just a sampling of the “places” Christian encounters:

Slough of Despond

Hill Difficulty

House Beautiful

Valley of Humiliation

Plain of Ease

Vanity Fair

Delectable Mountains

 

Similarly, he meets other persons and other pilgrims along the way. Against appearance, some villains, some faithful.

 

Such as:

Worldly Wiseman

The Interpreter

Hypocrisy

Charity

Pope and Pagan

Faithful

Hopeful

Atheist

 

I read a children’s version as a child and barely remember it. The full version has been on my TBR for quite some time, and I am glad to have finally read it. It is difficult for me as a Christian to view this as mere literature because it is something more. It is light in the darkness; it is truth; it is profound; it is timeless.

 

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

But it is indeed literature and had a tremendous effect on English literature. There are implicit allusions and explicit references in many other classics, such as…

 

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

Hinds Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard

And, of course…

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Others, I’m certain

 

I found it a bit ironic that I should read Bunyan, the Puritan, immediately following the anti-Puritan writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. I didn’t plan it that way. I liked both. Religion, as I believe was Hawthorne’s point, has its flaws. Christ, as Bunyan points out, has none.

 

I read this for the Back tothe Classics 2022 Challenge, Pre-1800 category, thereby completing all twelve categories of the challenge.

 

Wanderer’s Commentary about that bit that is MORE than literature: The Wicket Gate is the Cross of Calvary and the atoning work of Christ. The pilgrim’s struggles do not end when they come to Christ, but the previously mounting weight of their burden, their sin and guilt, is removed and discarded forever by grace through faith in the redeeming work of the sinless lamb of God – The LORD Jesus Christ.

 

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