Book Review John Bunyan The Pilgrims Progress

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1678 – spoiler alerts A famous Christian allegory, regarded as the first true novel in English literature. Given in two parts, it tells first of a man called Christian as he travels the arduous path from the city of Destruction to the Celestial City, in other words from the material World to Heaven. Bunyan observes the journey in a dream. Christian, warned of the coming destruction of Destruction (as with Sodom & Gomorrah) by the angelic Evangelist, and weighed down by a big sack called The Burden, abandons his family to set off when two men from the doomed city catch him up. One is Obstinate, who tries to talk him out of going, and the other is Pliable, who starts off intent on helping Obstinate, who gives up and goes home but pliable decides to go with Christian. Both men blunder into a swamp called the Slough Of Despond. Pliable drags himself out and goes home, giving up at the first obstacle. Christian drags himself to the far side of the slough, where someone called Help helps him out. (character names are an obvious clue as to how characters will behave. Help tells Christian there are steps to guide him past the slough, which is really not helpful as either he or The Evangelist could have pointed this out before Christian fell in the swamp. For much of Christian’s journey he only gets past obstacles by being warned about them. He meets two men running back down a path because there are lions further up it, but Christian is told they are chained and therefore unable to reach him so he carries on. Why were the other travelers not warned too, and how did they get past all the other difficulties Christian ran into? As Christian gets to the Celestial City a second narrator starts part two of the story. Christian’s wife, Christiana, is making the journey too, accompanied by her children, and several neighbours, some of them with physical and mental handicaps. (one man is called Mr Feeble-Mind. They face many of the same dangers Christian ran into, but work together to help overcome them, giving book two a sense of communal spirit and church support. There are some very memorable scenes in the book, The Slough Of Despond, and Christian’s spectacular fight with the giant winged demon, Apollyon, after which the hand of God directly appears to heal Christian’s wounds. The book was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Bible and it was influential on countless fantasy novels to follow. Many locations in the book were based on real ones that Bunyan saw on his regular journeys between Bedford and London. The Slough Of Despond was based on a giant clay pit that was used for bricks for London until as late as 2008. Arthur Chappell