Faithful

Character Analysis

No, he's not a geyser that goes off every hour on the hour in Yellowstone National Park. And he's not related to Marianne. He's just a guy who, like Christian, escapes his past and pursues the straight and narrow path of Christianity.

Righteous, ridiculed, tortured, and finally burnt at the stake, Faithful lives up to his name and is the martyr of The Pilgrim's Progress—the one who suffers and dies for what he believes in. Before he meets Faithful on the road from the Palace Beautiful, Christian seems to be the only real pilgrim on the road to the Celestial City. The others he has met with (Formalist and Hypocrisy, Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, Mr. Pliable) have either abandoned the journey for its hardships or shown the hollowness of their professed faith. But Faithful is different.

The devotion Faithful has to his religion is evident when we first see him, as he is unwilling even to slow down and let Christian catch up with him. As the two share their stories of the way so far, having both come from the same town, it becomes clear that Faithful's earnestness is at least equal to Christian's. His resistance to Wanton, Adam the first, and Moses differ from Christian's encounters, but you might say that this represents the variety of obstacles one can face on such a journey.

Christian and Faithful's exchange of stories when they meet (the "sweet discourse of all things that had happened to them" (P236)) is an important sign of how important fellowship and friendship are to the Puritan belief system.

Faithful's death at Vanity Fair ushers in a new sense of danger to the story. The death of one of the pilgrims is foretold by Evangelist. At the trial, however, it's Faithful's passionate defense (and, frankly, his big mouth) that peg him for execution. It's also important to note that, in his speech to the jury, he's defending not so much himself as Christ and condemning anyone who is against him.

But Faithful gets his well-deserved happy ending:

They therefore brought him out, to do with him according to their law; and first they scourged him, then they buffeted him, then they lanced his flesh with knives; after that, they stoned him with stones, then pricked him with their swords; and last of all, they burned him to ashes at the stake. Thus came Faithful to his end. Now I saw, that there stood behind the multitude a chariot and a couple of horses waiting for Faithful, who (so soon as his adversaries had dispatched him) was taken up into it, and straightway was carried up through the clouds with sound of trumpet, the nearest way to the celestial gate. (P500)

Sure, he's tortured in a way that seems more appropriate to an especially gory Game of Thrones episode than a Puritan treatise, but he then is rewarded with some awesome trumpet music and what is essentially a heavenly limo ride up to the Celestial City.

This is Bunyan's not-so-subtle (hey—no one ever accused him of being a nuanced writer) way of showing that a mouthing off to evil-doers is totally worth it... even if you do have to endure some particularly nasty flesh-lancing (yeesh), scourging (double yeesh), and burning-at-the-stake (triple yeesh).