Final Draft
John Bunyan's “The Pilgrim's Progress” is an allegorical story about the Christian religion. It allegorizes the journey of a Christian into the Celestial City, which represents heaven. Although “The Pilgrim's Progress” may seem simple and straight forward, there are many deeper meanings throughout the whole story. Bunyan uses the names of his characters to signify whom the character represents in the story. For example, the character Hopeful represents hopefulness; Help represents people who are willing to help others in need of assistance; Faithful represents people who are faithful to whatever they are associated with; and the main character, Christian, represents all young Christians in the world.
Christian is the central character of the book and the hero of the pilgrimage. Since Bunyan wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress” as an allegory rather than a novel, Christian is not portrayed as being particularly complicated or conflicted and, instead, has a simple personality. Christian represents just one profound aspect of the human experience—the search for religious truth. He is his faith. Christian’s motivation, the search for salvation in the Celestial City, clearly defines him.
Christian is deeply goal-oriented. Since reaching the Celestial City has a life-or-death urgency for him, he has little time nor energy for lesser matters. Even his family shrinks nearly to insignificance in his mind as soon as he leaves for his journey. He never mentions his wife or children to his travel companions. At the Palace Beautiful, he shows some emotion when one of the four mistresses of the house inquires about his family, but he does not bring up the subject himself, nor does he return to it later. This does not mean Christian lacks feeling, but only that the goal of salvation far outweighs any earthly concerns that a pilgrim has.
Apollyon wants to hinder Christian. Like Giant Despair, also bent on hindering Christian, Apollyon has a