Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- Bunyan's Christ, much like the representations of both God and Jesus in the Bible, sometimes seems to have a kind of split personality: sometimes he's incredibly stern, sometimes merciful. How do you see hard and soft aspects of Christianity working together in this book?
- After Christian and Hopeful leave the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, why does the narrator suddenly awake from his dream and then, in the next sentence, fall back and dream again?
- Within this story there is a lot of storytelling: repetition of experiences to other characters that we've already read, anecdotes about characters we don't know in order to argue a point, etc. Why is Christian asked so often to give his own story himself, or exchange it with other pilgrims? How is his ability to tell a story meaningful?
- Why does Bunyan begin with the frame of the narrator sleeping in jail, but never refer to that imprisonment again?
- What is it that makes the pilgrims feel "sick with love" when they near the Celestial City?
- In the Valley of the Shadow of Death, one half of the valley is darkness, while the other is light. What do you think is the meaning of this?
- Thinking very carefully about the last allegory of Christian and Hopeful wading through the river, how do you see this representing the moment of death?
- Why is the image of Ignorance the final one of the book?