The Burden

We will never complain about lugging around a heavy backpack again. Compared to a typical satchel, Christian is essentially lugging around a VW Bus on his back.

In our first image of Christian in the narrator's dream, he is described as having "a great burden upon his back" (P1). This burden, also referred to as his sack or pack, is something that neither he nor anyone else can remove, and it stays with him until he comes to the cross. Here, the narrator explains,

[...] just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from his back; and began to tumble, and so continued to do until it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. (P180) 

The idea of allegorizing Christian's sins, shame, and guilt as a burden on his back comes, in part, from the way sin and Christ's redemption are discussed in the New Testament. Verses like "He takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) or "his yoke is easy and his burden is light" (Matthew 11:29-30) reflect the Christian belief that Christ took on the sins of the world when he was crucified. It's for this reason that Christian's adoration of the cross causes his burden to fall off and roll away. 

The way in which others along the way, such as Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, offer alternate suggestions for removing the burden symbolizes how we try to deal with our sense of sin, shame, and guilt in other ways than acknowledging Christ's redemption. "Morality," or what Bunyan represents as social norms and forms of good behavior, is one of these alternate conscience-clearing attempts. But Bunyan thinks this is bogus—along the same lines as eating a few spoonfuls of your roommate's ice cream and thinking, "Hey, there's plenty more. They'll never miss it."

Christian's (and Bunyan's) sense of the burden is deeper. They're concerned with the original sin that everyone besides Christ (and Mary, for some) has carried since Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's for this reason that only Christian's coming to the cross allows the burden to fall. No longer "loaden with sin" (P182) as he sings, Christian is able to continue the journey more easily. Probably his knees feel a lot better, too.

By making the character's sin literal in this way, and continually reminding us of the pack's weight, Bunyan is able to really dramatize Christian's delight when it falls away. It's literally the lightness of this feeling at the cross that makes him first feel love and reverence for "the man that there was put to shame for me" (P182).