interrupt in the story from time and time instead of just telling the whole thing himself, this gives a sense that it is God, not Bunyan, who is in control of the story. The story, as it moves on, becomes more allegorical. Bunyan enjoys playing between the ordinary daily language and the allegorical Biblical language. Bunyan allows the dreamer (or Christian) to be interrupted by different characters from time to time, this is to give the sense that the dreamer, like everyone of us, is always tempted to sin. The word “burden” has appeared a lot of times in the story and this is because of its importance. If you are to be a good Christian, you need to have a burden, this shows that you are on the way to conversion. The example of the “Slough of Despond” represents the dirt of mankind sin which keeps accumulating no matter what God does to help (for example by sending prophets and His Son). Another example is when Christian is about to cross the “Dark River”, he is sinking because he does not have enough faith. It is a sin, according to the Puritans, to despair. But Christian eventually overcomes this test of faith and manages to get to the Celestial City. Throughout the book, not only places are given allegorical names, the characters are also given special names in respect to their nature and the role they are going to play. “Christian”, the Pilgrim in this story, is an example of every man who wants to be saved in order to gain eternal life. Like every man, he faces a lot of temptations in his life and is always distracted from the direction to God. He finally overcomes all these temptations and finds his way to the Celestial City (Heaven). Christian has chances to meet many other characters in the story and he manages to speak to all of them. There are basically two groups of people: those who help him (such as Evangelist and Good-will) and those who try to distract him (such as Giant Des...
