John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The first part of Pilgrim’s Progress tells the story of Christian’s journey from his Native City of Destruction to the Heavenly City. Bunyan presents the trip, meant to represent the life of each Christian, as both ordinary and exciting. The pilgrim on life’s journey will encounter fields and towns, friends and neighbors. The pilgrim will also encounter dangerous swamps, monsters, and wild animals. Since the world pilgrims travel through is the meeting place of physical and supernatural life, both the ordinary elements of human experience and encounters with the extraordinary are normal parts of Christian’s journey to salvation. The document produced here tells of the beginning of Christian’s journey. The style, the imagery, and the constant biblical allusions in the text are typical of the whole work.

As I Walked through the Wilderness of This World

After an introduction in verse, Bunyan sets the stage for his story by describing it as the dream of the author; the author will not reawake until the final line of part 1. As a writer, Bunyan is known for his rich uses of imagery—imagery drawn heavily from the Authorized Version of the Bible. In this opening paragraph, for instance, the description of the future pilgrim is taken from scripture. “Filthy rags” are how the prophet Isaiah describes human attempts to please God; the Psalmist speaks of sins as a “heavy burden … too heavy for me.” Similarly, the despairing cry “What shall I do?” is an echo of several biblical passages. The sorrow, as the main character will soon relate, is a sense of impending judgment due for his own sins and the sins of his community. Such sorrow is a natural and appropriate response to encountering God’s truth, as the future pilgrim does when he reads his book (the Bible).

In This Plight, Therefore, He Went Home

Bunyan’s description of the future pilgrim’s dilemma is a reflection of the differing understandings of salvation promoted by the state church (Church of England) and Bunyan’s own beliefs. The Church of England did not see society itself under judgment, taught that salvation lay in taking one’s appropriate place in society, and emphasized the communal rather than the individual aspects of salvation. Furthermore, the path to salvation offered through the Anglican Church was seen as the default position for any in the community who did not specifically reject it—no one need worry too much about being saved. Independents and other Puritans like Bunyan, however, understood society to be at odds with God. Salvation came only through rejecting society and its religious values and committing one’s self entirely to God. Although Bunyan’s version of Puritanism had strong communal implications (in part 2 of Pilgrim’s Progress, Christiana and her children travel together), there was an important individual component to religion. Underlying this stance was the assumption, in contrast to Anglicanism, that every person was lost unless he or she converted. The difference between the two positions is typical of a division in Western religiosity classified by sociologists as “church” versus “sect.”

The mocking and derision the future pilgrim experienced would have been very familiar to Bunyan’s audience. Bunyan himself was in jail when he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, and all Nonconformists faced significant penalties—socially, economically, and legally—for rejecting the state church in favor of their own religious beliefs. Adherence to a Dissenting congregation might even mean alienation from family and friends. It was this contempt that Puritans received from the world for their beliefs that strengthened the Puritan notion that the world itself was lost. Certainly the pressure to give up Dissenting beliefs and values taught the Puritans that the battles between good and evil over the destiny of souls were to be fought out in the world.

Bunyan has the first step in the journey to salvation begin with personal anguish. For Puritans, salvation required a strong sense of individual sin and unworthiness. Only those recognizing their sinfulness could turn to God for forgiveness and mercy. It was typical of Puritan values that a decision for conversion only followed many hours of reflection and consideration. While some of their modern-day heirs understand conversion as an instant, once-and-for-all occurrence, for Puritans it was a process involving time and multiple stages.

The phrase (odd to modern ears) “children of my bowels” reflects Bunyan’s own familiarity with the Authorized Version of the Bible. The original Greek of the New Testament does indeed use the word correctly translated in the Authorized Version as “bowels” to describe what modern translations render in different places as “heart” or “feeling.” Modern Western people usually make the heart the seat of human emotion. The ancients gave that role to the stomach. It is the stomach that receives the rush of acid, for instance, with some strong emotions or that churns with anxiety or hurts during times of stress. The main character is simply adapting a literary expression to describe how dear his children are to him.

Now I Saw … [Him] Reading His Book, and Greatly Distressed in Mind

The importance of reading in the main character’s conversion reflects Bunyan’s own experience—his conversion was prompted by two books of his wife’s. Of course, the book here in the story later proves to be the Bible, the chief source of inspiration for Bunyan, as for all good Puritans. But even these Bible-centered Protestants did not reject the help of other forms of literature. Pilgrim’s Progress itself was meant to be one of the books that helped Pilgrims on their way.

Evangelist is the first character to be introduced by name. In Bunyan’s story, the character of every person met in the pages is revealed by his or her name. Technically speaking, an Evangelist was one of the authors of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), but Bunyan uses the name in the modern sense. Evangelist is someone who can tell the main character about salvation (“the Gospel” or “the Good News”). The future pilgrim has worked out his need for salvation on his own but requires someone to direct him on the path. Evangelist does not take him to salvation or plot the whole journey but merely points him in the right direction.

Notice that up to this point in the story the main character does not have a name. His character has not yet been defined. Only after he makes an important decision can his true nature be revealed by the name he is given. This encounter between Evangelist and the main character emphasizes the individualistic aspect of the Puritan understanding of salvation. To obtain eternal life, the pilgrim must be willing to leave other kinds of life (family life, public life) behind. Underlying Bunyan’s beliefs was the conviction that “the world” (society, community, the established order) was opposed to God’s will and a hindrance to salvation. One must choose between the world’s way and God’s way.

At the same time, Puritan religion was communal as well as individualistic. At some point each individual must make a personal decision, but such decisions are not made in isolation. There is no salvation for the main character with Evangelist to point the way. At critical times in the story other individuals appear or reappear to keep the pilgrim on the path. The corporate nature of pilgrim life is emphasized more strongly in the second part of the book, where the pilgrims travel in a group.

The description of the meeting between Evangelist and the main character is a classic depiction of Puritan values. Human sin and its deserved condemnation are self-evident, and many people in the course of life might become aware of them. However, some who recognize their own faults and know they need to be saved might, by society’s pressure, decide to ignore their convictions. It is only when the sense of sin is too strong to ignore that the individual is willing to pursue relief. The main character is at this point not saved but a seeker after salvation. And to seek, he must leave his community behind.

The Neighbors Also Came Out

The decision to set out on the road to salvation is a momentous one. Only now can the pilgrim be called by his appropriate name, Christian. While the state church would have claimed that all those living in the city of Destruction (which Christian has just fled) were Christians, for the Puritans real Christians were those who were aware of their own sin and who turned to God for salvation.

The experience of opposition was an important part of Puritan self-understanding. Since the world was lost and under judgment, one could expect only opposition from those who lived in it. In the case of Christian, there is general contempt and specific opposition from the characters Obstinate and Pliable. Obstinate questions the pilgrim, allowing Christian to describe something of his hope for salvation, words that only bring derision on “the book.” Obstinate calls for the pilgrim to give up his silliness and come home, while Pliable proves more open to the message. Ultimately Pliable resolves to travel with the pilgrim, while Obstinate turns back in disgust. It is probably not a good sign for Pliable’s future as a pilgrim that he is more attracted to the journey by the joys of heaven than by the conviction of his own sin.

Bunyan’s short description of the responses of Christian’s neighbors hints at three types of opposition Nonconforming Christians experienced. The first was simple rejection, characterized by mockery—the sort of reaction Bunyan highlights in the story. The second, perhaps implied in the phrase “some cried after him to return,” was a more serious effort to persuade Dissenters to abandon their peculiar religious ideas. Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who appears later in the reading, provides one example of this sort as he tries to talk Christian into losing his burden in Morality. The final type of opposition is implied in the attempt “to fetch him back by force.” The state church possessed great power from the government to compel conformity. Bunyan himself, of course, wrote Pilgrim’s Progress while he was in jail for preaching without a license, a license that never would have been issued to him. The amount of legal trouble Dissenters faced varied from place to place and time to time. There were districts and periods where Nonconformists were generally ignored, while on other occasions they might face strict persecution. Even after 1688, though, when the freedom of Protestants to worship was generally allowed, Nonconformists faced severe legal limitations in terms of careers and education. When Bunyan describes the world as actively hostile to Puritan Christians, he is doing no more than recounting a reality he and most Nonconformists experienced.

Now I Saw in My Dream, That When Obstinate Was Gone Back

Christian and Pliable travel together while Christian gives more details about the glorious future awaiting believers in heaven. Their conversation demonstrates that the book Christian carries with him is indeed the Bible, a sure source of knowledge about spiritual realities. Although Christian is eager to hurry down the path to the Heavenly City, he finds himself slowed by the burden of sin he still carries on his back like a pack.

The “Slough of Despond” is one of Bunyan’s most famous images. Like that of any good allegorical figure, its rich complexity defies simple characterization, but among other things it is a swamp that traps people who are beginning their pilgrimage to the Heavenly City. The Slough itself stains and defiles, and in it the weight of sin is even more burdensome. It is ultimately revealed that the swamp is created from the discouragement that attends an awareness of personal sin. Although it is a trap or hazard on the path to salvation, it is one that cannot be completely mended, because the sorrow and fear created by an awareness of sin is natural (and even necessary) for those seeking to escape judgment.

Even if the Slough cannot ever be entirely drained, it should not be the great obstacle that it is. Here Bunyan is making a typical Puritan complaint against both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. Like a monarch ordering his highways to be maintained, God had commanded the road through the Slough to be repaired and provided much teaching to help Christians avoid being caught in the swamp of discouragement and self-doubt, yet these lessons had been mishandled, leaving many stuck in the mire. With appropriate instruction, a believer should be able to find God’s firm path through the dangerous slough. This is the fault of the state church, which neglects its essential functions and fails to teach important truths to its adherents, leaving pilgrims to find their own way down the difficult road to salvation.

Despite the hardships, Christian fights his way through the swamp, with the aid of the character Help—yet another reminder of the corporate aspect of Puritan faith. Christian needs others to give him a hand up from the swamp and to point him to the right path. But Pliable, who was so eager to experience the joys of the Heavenly City, is overwhelmed by the challenges of the journey and turns away. Christian continues on his way.

Now I Saw in My Dream That by This Time Pliable Was Got Home

Bunyan’s audience would have been very familiar with individuals who had temporarily associated themselves with Dissenting congregations and then returned to the state church. The story of Pliable served as a cautionary tale. Those who went back to their old ways were likely to get just as much grief from their neighbors as if they had remained true, yet they would also miss out on heaven. In fact, since Pliable is around to be derided by his neighbors while Christian has moved on, Pliable may be even be worse off in the present life, just as he will certainly be worse off in the future one.

Now as Christian Was Walking Solitary

Christian continues on his journey and encounters a new figure, a man who has advice for him. The pilgrim has set out on the road to the Heavenly City in order to have the burden lifted from his back. Mr. Worldly Wiseman suggests that there are easier ways to remove the burden, ways that do not involve hardship, danger, or the loss of his family and community standing.

From a Puritan perspective, images of morality and civility promoted by society and the Church of England were traps. As Puritans understood the Bible, human effort (“keeping the law”) could not save people from God’s judgment. To them, much of what the state church offered was a reliance on human effort, helping people to feel better about themselves so that they no longer noticed their burden of sin but not actually providing salvation. The Puritans saw such teaching as a medicine that masked a patient’s symptoms without curing the deadly disease. In rejecting “morality,” the Puritans were not advocating wild, sinful lifestyles—after all, Puritanism today is a byword for ultrastrict conduct. Instead, they were rejecting “moralism,” the idea that avoiding certain conspicuous sins was enough to please God. Civility was an even greater trap, elevating politeness and deference to society’s ideals of appropriate public behavior as the ultimate standard of human conduct.

Mr. Worldly Wiseman mocks both the teaching of “the book” and Christian’s efforts to understand it. The warning not to meddle in things too high for him was typical of the advice that often uneducated Dissenters might frequently receive. Many educated people believed that only the trained experts of the state church were competent to interpret the Bible and God’s will and found it offensive that less-educated and less-qualified people would presume to do so. Although it was not necessarily true of the first generation of Puritans, there was an increasing element of class division between Dissenters and the supporters of the established church. This division would grow with time, so that most Nonconforming English groups (Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and later Methodists), would be firmly working class in orientation.

For Bunyan, socially acceptable alternatives to fleeing the City of Destruction were foolish tricks. The burden of sin was a real problem pointing to a real solution, and any alleged “cure” that caused a would-be pilgrim to forsake the journey to salvation was a terrible lie. Christian is taken in and leaves the correct road for a dead-end path. Even though the difficult way of salvation is full of misleading tracks, it is always possible to get back on the right road.

So Christian Turned Out of His Way

Bunyan’s phrase “so Christian turned out of his way” signals the gravity of Christian’s mistake. To leave the path pointed out by Evangelist to seek a shortcut puts the whole pilgrimage at risk. Bunyan and his fellow Dissenters believed that the Church of England ignored biblical directives about the proper way to salvation and pointed the way instead to a path that led only to destruction.

There would be many false trails leading off the true road to the Heavenly City, but Bunyan highlights the path to morality and civility as being particularly dangerous. The way of morality and civility seemed to offer an attractive shortcut to relief from the burden of sin, yet as Christian tries to go in that direction, he finds the burden of sin growing and the path actually harder to follow. Trying to lead a genuinely moral life proves to be more difficult than it seemed initially and does not lead to salvation. Poor Christian despairs of ever reaching the Heavenly City. However, even though his sins are great, it is possible for him to return to the true path Fortunately, the pilgrim is not doomed by his misstep. It is possible for those who have gone astray to return to the right path. Bunyan provides Evangelist as the character who once again can point Christian in the right direction.

One of the ongoing debates within Christianity, going back to the time of Augustine and his opponents, is about the nature of the Christian life. Are pilgrims best represented as super-athletes, who need only an occasional spotter to remain pumped up, or are they more like patients in a hospital, weak and in constant need of medicine? Bunyan presents Christians in the mode of hospital patients. In life, pilgrims make mistakes. They take wrong turns; they fall into swamps; they are led astray and heed bad advice. It is because of human weakness that the journey is dangerous and full of pitfalls. Only by God’s help, following the directions given in the Bible and with encouragement and assistance from God-given allies along the way, will Christian and other pilgrims arrive at the Heavenly City.

Evangelist’s exhortation to Christian is very similar in form to a typical Puritan sermon. The introduction of headings (as with the “three things … thou must utterly abhor”) is still used in some traditions of preaching even today. Certainly the way in which Evangelist draws on complicated biblical imagery to provide a lesson about life would have been very familiar to anyone who attended a Dissenting congregation.