Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Pilgrim’s Progress, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Burden of Sin and Salvation through Christ
The World vs. Christianity
Obstacles on the Journey
The Centrality of the Bible
Women as Pilgrims
Summary
Analysis
As the group continues on their way, they’re warned of robbers ahead, though they see no sign of trouble. By this time, Christiana and her children have grown tired, so they stop at an inn run by a disciple named Gaius. After the pilgrims are given rooms, they sit down to supper, and Gaius is delighted to meet Christian’s family. He has been acquainted with the Christian family for a long time—their ancestry can be traced back to Antioch, he says. He names some of them, including the martyrs Stephen, Paul, Peter, Ignatius, and Polycarp.
In the Bible, Antioch is mentioned as the place where Jesus’s followers were first called Christians; Bunyan uses “Christian” as a tongue-in-cheek surname for the pilgrims’ family. All of the men named are among the earliest recorded martyrs: Stephen, Paul, and Peter are New Testament figures, and Ignatius and Polycarp were martyred in the 2nd century C.E.
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Gaius thinks that Christiana’s sons appear likely to carry on in their father’s footsteps, so he advises Christiana to search for good wives for the boys, so that Christian’s offspring will spread throughout the world. In fact, he suggests that Matthew and Mercy get married, so they do.
The passage of time is ambiguous in the story. One way or another, Matthew is old enough to marry now. Gaius sees marriage as an important way of ensuring the continuation of the Christian faith in the world.
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Gaius talks further about women. He says that although women brought death and the curse into the world, they also brought life and health. He claims that the reason that women in the Old Testament desired children so much was that they all hoped they might become the mother of the Savior. When the Savior did come, women were the first to rejoice in him, and they ministered to him much more faithfully than men did. They were even the first to spread the news of Christ’s resurrection. All these things demonstrate, Gaius concludes, that women are favored by God and share with men in God’s grace.
In the Book of Genesis, Eve is tempted to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, passing along its forbidden fruit to her husband and thus helping bring about the fall of humanity. Here, though, Gaius heaps praise on women’s role in seeking and serving Jesus Christ. This reflects Bunyan’s belief that women are equal to men as pilgrims, even if he doesn’t see their strengths as precisely identical to men’s.
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As they sit down to supper, Matthew observes that just seeing the prepared table increases his appetite. Gaius says it should be this way with all Christian teaching—all “Preaching […] and Ordinances here” are just setting the table for the feast that Christians will one day enjoy with God.
Preaching and “ordinances,” or sacraments (like baptism and the Eucharist), are earthly things that anticipate heavenly realities, much as a set table whets the appetite for a feast.
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When supper is served, they have a shoulder (with which David lifted up his heart to God) and a breast (which David once leaned on his harp). They also drink wine (“Juice of the true Vine”) and eat apples (Gaius explains that sin, not apples, was at fault when humanity fell) and nuts. Gaius likens the nuts to “hard texts” that must be cracked open. The company is so pleasant that the pilgrims decide to stay here for a month, allowing time for Matthew and Mercy to get married.
The contents of the feast are allegorical, reflecting various biblical imagery (the “true Vine,” for instance, is a reference to John 15:1). The nuts symbolize the challenge of interpreting the Bible; not all parts of the Bible are equally simple to understand.
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That first night, the older members of the company stay up talking. At one point, Gaius and Honest discuss the relationship between grace and the conquering of sin. Gaius explains that until the soul is overcome by grace, it has no desire to fight sin. He then tells an illustrative story in which an old, naturally decayed man and a young, sin-corrupted man go on pilgrimage. Which one displayed more grace? Honest says the young man would, because grace shines brighter when it overcomes greater oppositions, and older pilgrims sometimes become presumptuous. They also discuss a passage from the Book of Isaiah, about Christ’s unlikely origins and lack of outward beauty.
Gaius and Honest discuss a primary element of the Christian life—how sin is overcome. It’s not something that can happen through willpower alone, Bunyan believes. Only grace can spur a person to resist and overcome their sin, and the worse a person’s sins, the more grace is needed, and the more God is honored as a result.
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