The Pilgrim's Progress

Report of T he Pilgrim’s Progress
Course: History of British Literature Date: 27th, October 2012
Recently I’ve read the Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, which was written by John Bunyan, an English author, in 1687. It’s regarded as one of the most significant masterpieces of religious English Literature following The Bible. Besides, this novel reflects several aspects of the 17th society in Britain, so it can be called a realistic literature as well. For its perfect mixture of religion and carnal society, I appreciate it very much.
This novel told a story combined by two parts, both of which were related to the arduous journeys of Christians. The protagonist in former part was named Christian, who originally lived in the City of Destruction, determined to take off the burden on his back and avoid being destroyed in his hometown, so he set out to seek for the Celestial City. He met with different people and various things on the way, which might guide him, mislead him, hurt him, help him or frighten him. Fortunately, he overcame all the difficulties and temptations,and eventually reached the Celestial City. The latter part wa s about Christian’s family, his wife and children. They also confronted numerous similar challenges, but our heroine succeeded with other’s helps and arrived in the same place as Christian. Bunyan was a Christian, and he wrote to announce his piety. Although the world, not only in the novel but also in the real society, was much wicked and immoral, the religious Christian chose to keep piety and pursue beauty and kindness. They trusted the God and they believed the world would become ideal one day with their sincere prayers and devotion.
I chose to read this novel with an intention to learn more about religion, meanwhile I was a little afraid because of cultural difference this theme might be too recondite and hard for me to understand. However, the Pilgrim’s Progress proved my worries were needless by its vivid language and clear structure. I searched the Internet and found the writer Bunyan born in a craftsman’s family wasn’t well_educated. I regarded it as a main reason to his simple writing style, which was quite different from other pedantic authors’. What matteredwa s not one’s educational degree, but his profound understanding of the theme. Bunyan did quite well in this point. He devoted his whole life into the religional career so that he was qualified to produce such an excellent masterpiece. Besides, I supposed the way that the roles in this book were named also contributed a lot to the readers’ understanding. For instance, the man who Christian met on the top of the Hill Difficulty was named Timorous, for his characteristic was timidity. Timorous was so faint-hearted that he was even scared off by the tied lion in the daytime. I could master Bunyan’s intention of this man at the first sight of his name. However, it did n’t mean all the roles were simply signed by their names in the book; on the contrary, they were all derived from flesh and blood in the carnal world,
so critics thought highly of the book for its vivid reflection of the real society.
In my consideration, another decisive reason for the b ook’s popularity is the innovative structure. In the beginning of the story Bunyan told the readers it happened in a man’s dream, and during the process of story-telling, the dreamer interrupted many times to narrate what he observed in his dream. As we knew, implicit dreams were supposed to foretell something in the future, so Bunyan created a dreaming way to tell the religional allegory, in order to remind readers to think deeply of the story, not just take it for amusement.
The Pilgrim’s Progress enjoys my repeated compliments, and it impresses me so much with its concise language, attractive structure and profound contents. I’m an atheist, but I still suppose it’s a suitable approach to know more concerning Christianism, if students feel unsatisfied with some dull religional lectures.。