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Part 1: Beulah, the River of Death, and the Celestial City
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
The narrator tells the reader to interpret his dream but to be wary of misinterpreting or being “extreme” “in playing with the out-side” of the dream. He tells the reader to take the “gold” and discard the “dross” from what he has written. But if everything is discarded, the narrator might just dream again.
In this poetic conclusion, Bunyan encourages his audience not to take his allegory too literally (“playing with the out-side”). Instead, readers should take from it what spiritual messages (“gold”) they find fit to preserve. He closes with a playful warning that if his story is ignored altogether, his narrator will not give up.
Themes
Quiz
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