Re-reading John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ I recalled how bored I had become the first time I read it many years before. But now, in an age where the lunatics have taken over our asylum, the book reads in a very different light.
The Evangelist, like many of our leaders today, shows many sins of psychosis. By losing touch entirely with reality, it is possible to build imaginary kingdoms. We in the UK are with the rest of the world as if on the Titanic heading straight for the iceberg (a climate catastrophe). But our leaders have taken it into their heads to resolve all our problems by quitting one upper deck cabin for another much lower down away from the sight of our future. They paint a comforting notion that Brexit self-blinding separates us from future perils.
Bunyan’s Evangelist leads the pilgrim through a wicker gate into an hallucinogenic world. This fabulously described world is so divorced from reality that it allows Bunyan to paint a comforting notion that separation from the many perils that beset the pilgrim (and even the cruel death painted for Faith) is merely a prelude for experiencing the celestial drug.
There are many extraordinary quirks in the tale. The familiar depiction of women as little more than harlots and seducers ensures that readers who can stomach the prose are likely to exclude over half the population of the world. The constant referencing to chapters of the Bible as if the ‘progress’ is already a well-laid path with academic credentials. The oddly anti-Semitic moment when Moses beats up the pilgrim and then just disappears is one where Bunyan decides not to provide New Testament referencing. But then Moses reappears with Enoch and Elijah as the Shining Men to be transfigured (presumably through conversion) at the end of Book One and the Pilgrim’s Dream.
Bunyan, like many of our political leaders, lives in a fantasy world. It may provide temporary comfort as the Titanic ploughs on. But even as we strike the iceberg, those in charge will be the first to the lifeboats leaving us with no sight of a revelatory kingdom – only the immense depth of an ocean stretching as far as we can see.
So let’s dump Bunyan’s
Tale over the side and take over the ship before it’s too late!
