The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which is to Come, Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream

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Title: The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which is to Come, Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream
Author: John Bunyan
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Year: 1666/2000
325 pages
Audiobook.

This is not a review of the religious sentiments expressed in this early allegorical novel.

The allegory itself was heavy-handed, perhaps because the art of fiction was still young. There is much in the way of deus ex machina, miracles and the like, while the plot is not much developed. It falls somewhere between Jaynes's "[the] god told me to do it" structure described in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and Forster's description of a plot (rather than a picaresque series of "and then... and then..." events).

Part 1 is far more engaging. Part 2 ("oh, yeah, women can be saved, too") seemed repetitious.

Emotionally, it was similar to reading the Left Behind series in that I have a hard time viscerally understanding why faith trumps acts. That, I suppose, demonstrates that I was raised in a very different spiritual and philosophical milieu.