Introduction
John Bunyan’s groundbreaking allegorical novel ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ (1678) opens with John in Bedford County Gaol, where he was imprisoned for holding unlicensed Christian gatherings. He recalls the time many years earlier when it first came to him, with disconcerting conviction, that there should be more to a believer’s Sunday than playing tip-cat on the village green.
AS I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den,* and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept, I dreamed a dream.* I dreamed; and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?”*
In this plight, therefore, he went home, and refrained himself as long as he could, that his wife and children should not perceive his distress; but he could not be silent long, because that his trouble increased: wherefore at length he brake his mind to his wife and children; and thus he began to talk to them:
* The first of many autobiographical touches, this ‘den’ is Bedford County Gaol, where Bunyan was imprisoned following his arrest in November 1660 and where he remained after his conviction the following January. He was charged under the Conventicle Act of 1593, which made it an offence to attend a religious gathering, other than at a Church of England parish church, with more than five people who were not members of one’s own family.
* The literary device of a religious dream had been used three hundred years earlier by William Langland, author of ‘Piers Ploughman.’ See The Triumphal Entry.
* In this part of his dream, Bunyan is thinking back to his adult conversion (he had been baptised as an infant) in the 1650s and to his first wife, whose name he does not tell us. The story is told without allegory in ‘Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners’ (1666).
Précis
John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ opens with John in gaol, looking back over his religious conversion some years before. He sees himself in a dream as ‘Christian,’ a simple man who has just read some news that has thoroughly alarmed him, and who is wondering whether he dare to share his distress with his wife and children. (56 / 60 words)
John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ opens with John in gaol, looking back over his religious conversion some years before. He sees himself in a dream as ‘Christian,’ a simple man who has just read some news that has thoroughly alarmed him, and who is wondering whether he dare to share his distress with his wife and children.
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Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: if, may, must, not, or, otherwise, since, whereas.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
How did the narrator describe the man in his dream?
Suggestion
As clad in rags and very distressed. (7 words)
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Bunyan dreamt of a man in rags. The man held a book. ‘What shall I do?’ he cried.
Variation: Try rewriting your sentence so that it uses one or more of these words: 1. Clothes 2. See 3. Who