The Pilgrim's Progress book review: Highway to Heaven

My review of John Bunyan's classic allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, which dramatizes the journey of the Christian believer through the fallen mortal world towards eternal reward; a heavy-handed work to be sure, but also one written with great earnestness and conviction.
#thepilgrimsprogress #pilgrimsprogress #johnbunyan #christianity #protestantism #christianfiction #allegory #books #literature #classics #booktube #bookreview

[@theemptyatom]

Love this book, one of my fav religious text. We have all met people who fall into these categories of being for you or against you, be it Mr. Pliable, Mr. Legality and so on. People out here wear certain faces, but when push comes to shove most cut bait and run, especially if one finds themselves in the slough of respond. Very true for today with the shallow everyone out for themselves mentality and willing to burn the country down if they don't get their way. Like demons they like to possess (insert themselves unwanted into situations) just to sabotage it. The last plague is death itself. We are, in a lot of ways, living in an age of existential crisis much like the famous speech of Macbeth: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

[@TH3F4LC0Nx]

Yeah, I think we can all probably see people we've known in the various figures Christian encounters on his pilgrimage. Fair weather friends and whatnot. And yes, there does seem to be a certain malaise nowadays. Like I say at the end, it's incredibly important to live one's life with an ideal in mind, but the modern world is much more materialistic, and so I think a lot of people may have something of a void to be filled. Valuable book, even if it is heavy-handed. :)

[@theemptyatom]

@@TH3F4LC0Nx The Moravian John Comenius wrote a text called 𝐿𝑎𝑏𝑦𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 about 50 years before 𝑃𝑖𝑙𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑠 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 which could have had an influence on Bunyan

[@kurtfox4944]

"Allegory in the most blunt and least subtle way." - um yeah, I'd hate to use the word 'allegory' for this because there is nothing left to the imagination. Allegory - defn. a story or poem or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. I find that there is no hidden meaning in the characters. Their names tell you what you are to expect from them. Therefore, no allegory. Also, no subtlety or surprise. I DNF'd this. 1) The allegory, well ... isn't 2) All characters, because of the supposed allegory, are also very flat and one dimensional. 3) Predictable 4) And, then... same story told twice - boring. If you have to tell it twice, then it means you were unsuccessful in telling it the first time. Or, bad editing. Or, author thinking your audience is incredibly STUPID. (An aside: if you have to read a dumbed-down version of this, WOW, how terrible was that! I cannot imagine making this even dumber) 5) oh, did you say this was heavy-handed? I used the word "preachy" but your description is apt!

[@TH3F4LC0Nx]

Lol, shots fired at The Pilgrim's Progress! XD Yeah, I can totally understand dnfing this one. Part of me kinda wanted to after part 1 when I realized I was basically gonna be reading the same exact thing over again, but, for the purposes of the review, I had to slog it out. XD Part of the reason why the book treats its audience like idiots I think, or at least according to the introduction to this edition, is that Bunyan was a Puritan and he was having to work around certain skeptical attitudes towards art. He had to justify his narrative as having religiously instructional value, so it's more of a treatise first and a novel second. And yeah, the version I read as a kid updated the language from the "ye olde" variety to something children could understand. And I think it had pictures, so there's that at least. XD