The Pilgrim's Progress

Rating:
Summary: THE REAL AND MORAL WORLDS EVERTED
Review: A letter to Marvin Minsky about this book:

I urge you tolook at a remarkable book by the English Puritain John Bunyan(1628-1688), "The Pilgrim's Progress", which is one of the great evangelical Christian classics, though clearly that is not why it interests me and should interest you (although I AM interested in the puzzle that is the religious sense, which even the irreligious feel, and this book can give remarkable insight into that as well).

Rather its fascination lies in the pilgrimage it depicts, or in the fact that human traits, vices, virtues, &c are PERSONIFIED as particular individuals who are their living and speaking epitome, and who are encountered along the way in revealing situations.

Bunyan's hero is appropriately named Christian. Someone once wrote that "Christian's journey is timeless as he travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, meeting such characters as Pliable, Talkative, Giant Despair, Evangelist, Worldly-Wiseman, Faithful, Ignorance and Hopeful."

At first this personification is merely amusing, even a bit annoying (as caricatures or truly stereotypical people can be); but after a while I found myself enthralled because I realized that the effect of this odd literary device was to give unmatched insight into the nature of such traits. The force of the whole thing comes from the fact that one journeys about in - literally INSIDE of - what is both a comprehensive and finite moral and psychological landscape (a "psycho-topography"), very much as though one were INSIDE the human mind and your "Society of the Mind" was embodied in the set of actors. This is more or less the opposite or an inversion of the 'real world' of real people, who merely SHARE those attributes or of whom the attributes are merely PIECES; in "Pilgrim's Progress", by contrast, the attributes are confined in their occurrence to the actors who are their entire, unique, pure, and active embodiment, and humanness, to be recognized at all, has to be rederived or mentally reconstructed from the essential types.

The effect, for me, was something like experiencing a multidimensional scaling map that depicts the space of the set of human personality types, by being injected directly - mentally and bodily - into it by means of virtual reality technology.

So Bunyan's book has something of the interest to a psychologist, neuroscientist, or philosopher that Edwin Abbot's "Flatland" has to a mathematician.

I don't mean to overpraise "Pilgrim's Progress", of course; it was written for theological rather than scientific purposes, and has conspicuous limitations for that reason. But its interest to a student of the mind who looks at it at from the right point of view can be profound.

- Patrick Gunkel

Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: This book is a true classic. John Bunyan spins a wonderful tale of the spiritual walk to heaven. The language may be a bit hard and it won't be that easy of a read, but it is definately worth the while!

It is spiritually edifying and also quite captivating.

A must read!!!

Rating:
Summary: For All the Sojourners
Review: This book is essential reading for any Christian who wants to "fight the good fight" and to finish the race well. The excellent thing about this book is that it helps to give the big picture of life and what small events that happen in life can mean in the scheme of things. The first book is about about a man named Christian (you can see that the allegory isn't too hard to understand) and the things that happen to him after he starts on the journey on the road that leads to Heaven. We see how with each step and misstep along the way Christian has the option of continuing on the road to Heaven or giving up, and that helps us readers to realize that the same thing is true in our own lives. Another thing I really like about this book is how even when Christian totally goes off the path and in the wrong direction, God extends grace to him and he is able to return once again to the road to Heaven. The second book is about Christian's wife and family, and is also worth a read. One thing to note though, unless you are extremely comfortable reading old English (which I am not), it would be a good idea to get the modern language version instead of the original; because I read the original and there were several times when I thought about how I probably would prefer a more readable, modern translation. But whichever version you choose, make sure you read this book. It will help you to thoughtfully consider the here and now and also your final destination.