The Pilgrim's Progress Analysis

Who is our narrator? Why is he in jail? What is he taking to make him sleep so long? Ah, unanswerable questions. Because the "real life" setting of the jail only enters for two sentences in the who...

The pronoun "I" occurs so rarely in this story that it's sometimes easy to forget that it's all "just a dream." And this is for good reason. The dream is Bunyan's pretext for presenting these Chris...

In a way, The Pilgrim's Progress unites two things that might not otherwise seem to go together: adventure stories and religion. But hey, there are lots of great things that seem like they shouldn'...

The allegorical names of characters in The Pilgrim's Progress give you a pretty clear sense of where Bunyan's sympathies lie. Introducing a character as Envy or Hypocrisy doesn't leave much room to...

Bunyan intended this story to be easily accessible and digestible, and his writing style reflects this. The sentences are easy to understand, especially when the message is extra important, like th...

If you're imagining the kind of pilgrim who landed at Plymouth Rock, you're… well, close. Bunyan was an important figure in the 17th-century Puritan community, which, due to persecution in Englan...

The ending of The Pilgrim's Progress is a strange mixture of the utterly predictable and the utterly bizarre. We know that this is an allegory for the Christian journey toward eternal life. To Chri...

The toughness of this book really lies in the allegory. Not only are characters themselves allegorical (which their names immediately tell us), but the dramatic action and description are as well....

It might be weird to say that this book—being old, adventure-ridden, and full of crazy intrigue—doesn't follow a "classic plot." But it doesn't.Sure, we have a beginning and a end. And they ti...

The Call All he knows is that something ain't right. Alone and sure of some impending doom, surrounded by people who think he's simply crazy, Christian's state of mind at the start of the story i...

With the guidance of Evangelist, Christian leaves the City of the Destruction. Accompanied in turn by Faithful and Hopeful, Christian encounters strangers and challenges on his way to the Celestia...

Nobody's perfect. So what, you may ask, were Bunyan's little weaknesses? The Puritan preacher was a confirmed potty-mouth. (Source.) Bunyan had six children in total: four by his first wife, Mary B...

There's really only one mildly tantalizing conversation in this book, between dear, sweet, innocent Faithful and the perhaps all-too-understanding Christian about "one whose name was Wanton":Faithf...

Mr. Sinai (P75) "Though I walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear none ill, for thou art with me" (P326). This verse is taken from Psalm 23.Lady Wanton (P363) is also referred to by...