The Pilgrim's Procrastination: My Journey with John Bunyan

I started The Pilgrim's Progress months ago.  My first encounter with it was way back in high school, when we were given an excerpt to read in a British Literature class.  I was not enamoured of it, and even though one finds allusions and references to it in literature from the seventeenth century to the present, I thought I might well give it a miss.  The turning point for me came when I learned that C.S. Lewis' earliest novel was called The Pilgrim's Regress.  The nod to Bunyan was obvious.  Since it is one of my life goals to read everything by Lewis that I possibly can, I thought I should probably familiarize myself with The Pilgrim's Progress to enhance my understanding of Lewis' book.  Some years went by.  I acquired a copy of The Pilgrim's Regress.  A couple more years went by.  I acquired a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress.  A couple more years went by.  This summer I bit the bullet and started reading.

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  Simply put, it is an allegory of the journey of the soul to God.  The whole book is framed as a dream of the narrator - who asserts himself occasionally to remind us that he saw these things in his dream.  Perhaps this fits into the tradition of spiritual wisdom coming to people in dreams.  The main character, Christian, is an Everyman figure: he is there to represent all Christians, rather than to serve as a developed character in his own right.  Christian departs from his hometown, the City of Destruction, leaving his family behind, and embarks on a journey to the Celestial City (representative of heaven, the soul's final destination).  Christian carries a burden on his back, symbolizing the weight of sin.  His journey is long and arduous.  All along the way he encounters various obstacles, trials, and missteps - often represented by allegorical geographical features with fabulous names like the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle.  Sometimes he must battle adversaries, such as the fiend Apollyon and the Giant Despair.

Christian Reading in His Book, William Blake, 1820's

Perhaps the most famous stop on Christian's itinerary is the not-so-delightful village of Vanity Fair, which lent its name to William Makepeace Thackeray's celebrated Victorian novel.

In the end, Christian does reach the Celestial City.  And it's a good ending.  Which is why it's too bad that Bunyan felt the need to write a sequel.  The Second Part of The Pilgrim's Progress concerns the journey of Christian's wife - called Christiana - and their four sons.  Christiana has decided it's a good idea to leave the City of Destruction after all, and follow after her husband.  This is where I slowed down in my own journey through the book.  Though not entirely without interest, I'm not sure that Part 2 trods enough new ground to justify itself, nor that it quite lives up to Part 1.

Bunyan's purpose in writing the book was to teach Christians to see the world itself as an allegory: to learn to see the spiritual realities (and consequences) that lie behind life's trials and pleasures.  Though his allegorical style might be a bit heavy-handed and unsophisticated for some, I genuinely enjoyed it.  Whereas I am an Anglican and Bunyan was a Calvinist Dissenter, we do not see eye to eye about many things - that being said, I still found spiritual profit in this book, and I understand why it has won the hearts of so many Christians.  And it's a good story.  I suspect that Bunyan profited more than he knew from reading those "popular stories" in the chap-books when he was an unconverted youth.