The Pilgrim’s Progress is the story of a man named Christian who flees the City of Destruction with a heavy burden on his back and walks, through every kind of trouble, to the Celestial City. It was written by John Bunyan, a Bedford tinker, mostly in a prison cell, and published in 1678. After the Bible it has probably been read by more Christians than any other book in English. It is an allegory: every place on the road and every person Christian meets stands for something in the life of a soul coming to God and going on with him.

Here is a plain guide — who wrote it, what happens, what the pictures mean, and how to read it now. The full text is free in the Ochorus library, so you can move straight from this page to the book itself.

Who wrote it, and where

John Bunyan (1628–1688) mended pots and pans for a living. He had almost no schooling, a wild youth by his own account, and a long, agonised conversion that he later described in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. He became a preacher among the Bedford nonconformists, and when the law forbade preaching outside the established church he refused to stop. He spent most of the years from 1660 to 1672 in Bedford jail, and it was there, with a Bible and a copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, that he began to dream his dream.

That matters for reading the book. Bunyan was a pastor writing for ploughmen and their wives, people who knew their Bibles and their own hearts and not much else. That is why the book is so concrete. Despair is not an idea; he is a giant with a club. Doubt is a castle with a dungeon. No one forgets a giant.

He also wrote out of Scripture so completely that the margins of the old editions are crowded with references. The road itself is the narrow way of Matthew 7:13–14. The burden is the guilt of Isaiah 64:6, where our righteousnesses are filthy rags. The whole journey is Hebrews 11:13–16, where the people of faith confess that they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Almost nothing in the book is invented; it is Scripture turned into a landscape.

The story, stage by stage

The book opens with one of the most famous sentences in English:

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

In the dream a man stands in rags with a book in his hand and a great burden on his back, weeping, because he has learned from the book that his city will be burned with fire. A man called Evangelist finds him and asks, “Do you see yonder wicket-gate?” He cannot, but he can see a shining light, and he is told to keep his eye on it and go. So he runs from his own door with his fingers in his ears, crying, “Life! life! eternal life!”

What follows is a road with stations on it. Christian falls into the Slough of Despond, the bog of fear and guilt that catches people newly awakened to their sin, and is pulled out by a man called Help. He is talked out of the way by Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who sends him to the village of Morality to have his burden removed by good behaviour, and nearly dies under the overhanging mountain of Sinai before Evangelist brings him back. He passes through the wicket-gate, which is Christ himself (John 10:9), and comes to the house of the Interpreter, where he is shown pictures that teach him what he will need to know on the road.

Then comes the moment the whole first part turns on. Christian climbs a hill with a cross on it, and as he comes level with the cross the burden slips from his shoulders, rolls down the hill, and falls into an open grave, and he never sees it again. Three shining ones meet him: one says his sins are forgiven, one gives him new clothes, one sets a mark on his forehead and gives him a sealed roll to carry. Bunyan puts it this way:

Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, “He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.”

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

Notice the order. The burden does not fall at the gate. It falls at the cross, after he has already begun to follow. Bunyan is describing his own experience, and that of many: a person can be truly turned toward Christ and still carry the weight of guilt for a while, until they see clearly what the cross has done.

After the cross the road does not get easier. Christian climbs the Hill Difficulty, sleeps in an arbour and loses his roll, and has to go back for it. He is welcomed at the Palace Beautiful, which is the church, where he is fed, taught, and armed. He goes down into the Valley of Humiliation and fights the fiend Apollyon, winning only when, thrown down and nearly dead, he grasps his sword again: Ephesians 6:10–17 acted out. He walks through the Valley of the Shadow of Death in darkness, with hell on one side and a ditch on the other, comforted by hearing a pilgrim ahead of him say the words of Psalm 23:4.

He gains a companion, Faithful, and together they come to Vanity Fair, a town where everything is for sale all the year round, and where pilgrims who will not buy are hated. Faithful is tried, condemned, and burned, and a chariot carries him straight to the gate of the city — Bunyan giving to a martyr the shortest road of all. Christian goes on with a new companion, Hopeful, who was converted by watching Faithful die.

The two of them make one bad decision: the way is hard, so they climb a stile into By-Path Meadow, which looks easier. They lose the path, and are caught by Giant Despair and locked in the dungeon of Doubting Castle, where he beats them and urges them to kill themselves. They lie there until Christian suddenly remembers what he has had all along:

I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

It does. Then the Delectable Mountains, where shepherds show them the Celestial City through a glass. Then a confident young man named Ignorance, who is sure he will be saved because his heart is good. Then the Enchanted Ground, where the air makes pilgrims drowsy and the two keep each other awake by talking about their conversions. Then the land of Beulah, the country of Isaiah 62:4, where the city is in sight. And then the river, which has no bridge, and which every pilgrim must cross at the depth appointed for him. Christian nearly drowns in it, from fear; Hopeful holds his head up. The gates open, and the narrator sees in through them and wishes himself among them.

Then, in the last paragraph, Ignorance arrives at the river, is ferried across by a boatman called Vain-hope, comes to the gate without a certificate, and is bound and carried away. Bunyan will not let the reader off with a happy ending alone. There is a way to hell, he says, even from the gates of heaven.

Part Two: Christiana’s road

Six years later Bunyan published a second part, in some ways a lovelier book. Christian’s wife Christiana, who had refused to go with him, sets out with her four sons and a young neighbour, Mercy. Where Christian went alone and armed, they go as a family, with a guide, Great-heart, who fights their giants for them. They gather a company of the weak and the frightened — Mr. Fearing, Mr. Feeble-mind, Mr. Ready-to-halt on his crutches — and bring them all through.

Part Two shows that the road is not only for heroes. It ends with a series of deaths that are among the finest pages Bunyan wrote, as one pilgrim after another is called over the river. Mr. Valiant-for-truth says, “My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage,” and goes down into the water saying the words of 1 Corinthians 15:55, “Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?” And then the line every reader remembers: “So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.” It is 2 Timothy 4:7 made into a scene.

What the pictures mean

Most of the allegory explains itself. A few keys help.

  • The burden is not sin in general but the felt guilt of sin, the awakened conscience. It comes off at the cross and nowhere else.
  • The wicket-gate is Christ, the strait gate of Matthew 7:14. Everyone who climbs into the road by another way — over the wall, as Formalist and Hypocrisy do — comes to a bad end.
  • The roll is assurance. Christian can lose it through carelessness, but the mark on his forehead he never loses.
  • Doubting Castle is not unbelief but the despair that can seize a real believer who has wandered off the path. The key was in his pocket the whole time. The promises of God are what get you out.
  • The river is death, and its depth varies with the pilgrim’s faith at the time.
  • Ignorance is the religious person who has never gone through the gate. He is likeable, confident, and lost. Bunyan places him last so that the warning is the final word.

Why it has lasted

Three reasons. It is true to experience: almost everyone who has walked with Christ for any length of time recognises the Slough, the Hill, the Valley, and the Castle, and can name the week they were in each. It is soaked in Scripture, so it does not date the way a novel dates. And it is a good story; children love it before they understand it, and Bunyan wrote it so that they would. It answers a question people still ask: what does the Christian life feel like from the inside? Hebrews 12:1–2 says to run with patience the race set before us, looking to Jesus. Bunyan simply drew the course.

How to read it today

Read it as a story first. Do not stop to decode every name on the first pass. Let Christian run, and let the giants be giants. The meaning will find you.

Keep a Bible near. The margin references in the old editions are the best commentary the book has; when Bunyan cites a verse, the whole scene is usually that verse.

Read it aloud if you can. Bunyan wrote in the plain, rhythmic English of a preacher, and families have read it aloud for three hundred years for a reason.

Do not skip Part Two. Many editions leave it out. It is gentler, funnier, and in places more moving than Part One, and it corrects the impression that pilgrimage is a solo sport.

Read Grace Abounding beside it. Bunyan’s spiritual autobiography tells you where every scene came from. He lived in the Slough of Despond for years.

Then notice which stage you are in. Bunyan’s deepest point is that all of them are on the road, and that Doubting Castle is only a few yards off it, with a way back. Philippians 1:6 says that the one who began a good work in you will complete it. That is the confidence the whole book breathes. The road goes on, and the trumpets are waiting.