The Pilgrim's Progress Respect and Reputation Quotes

Not the most appetizing of proverbs either, is it? Christian uses it here in conversation with Faithful to describe the character of Pliable. The irony of Pliable is that while his goal is to please people and butter them up, he ends up being ridiculed by those very people. Pliable is a good example of a larger truth in the book: it's impossible to please everyone.

This quote comes from Faithful's account of Shame's argument against religion. The "foolishness" of religion, for Shame, is particularly in the last italicized portion of the quote. It's a risk of one's interests (since one is investing them in faith instead of politics or power), but it's a risk that specifically "nobody else" will understand. This is sort of key to why Bunyan is putting this argument in the mouth of Shame. His fear is of the shame and ridicule, the foolish appearance, that would be attributed to him for investing in something that the world did not understand.

Having encountered Talkative, Christian here informs Faithful of his reputation. This is a good example of how reputations (and paying attention to them) are helpful to the pilgrims. Because they know better, they know not to take Talkative's talk at face-value.

Hundreds of years later, Cher Horowitz from Clueless would describe this as being "a Monet."  Talkative looks good from a distance, but up close he's a mess. Christian picks up on the word "pretty" here to reference Talkative's main interest: looking good. Since, as Christian guesses, those close to him know he's less than perfect, Talkative's main concern is with seeming good to those at a distance—strangers, marginal acquaintances, the "public."

By-ends is speaking here… as usual making the world turn him a healthy profit. This particular image of rowing, however, specifically calls up the two-facedness that Bunyan is saying it takes to win in the worldly-world. You have to be looking one way and moving another.

Not much subtlety here, is there? "Prince," "Lord," and "Sir"? These titles directly reference the aristocracy of Bunyan's own country, England. All you have to do is look at the names to see how he views these blue-bloods. Why should he target not just the rich but the noble, though? How does Faithful offend them in particular?

In this speech, Christian is essentially pegging By-ends as a kind of fair-weather friend to Jesus's teachings: happy to go the Gospel way when it suits his own interests and makes friends, but quick to jump ship when things get rough. Comparing "rags" with "silver slippers," Christian is also specifically targeting the way people's allegiances go primarily to material life, even if they say they're followers of Christ.

This is how Christian introduces his story of the errors and demise of Little-faith, but the way Bunyan makes Little-faith's home "the Town of Sincere" is worth pausing over. We generally tend to think of sincerity as a good thing, right? How does Bunyan's association of sincerity with having little faith comment on the potential problems of sincerity?

Bunyan's representation of Flatterer is interesting on a couple of levels. One is that it gives us the sole racial allusion in the text. The Devil had been represented as both a flatterer and as black long before Bunyan was writing, so (historically) his fusion of the two in this character makes sense. It's also a pretty wicked jab at the false preachers he ridicules so much in this text. The other interesting thing, though, that, in comparison with his other allegories, Bunyan is relatively uninterested here in fleshing out the nature of flattery as such. He seems much more interested in showing us consequences of being influenced by flatterers and in putting us on our guard against them.

This laughter precedes the much longer speech Atheist launches into about religion, but the action of laughing describes his attitude perfectly. His ridicule for the pilgrims' journey to the Celestial City is based equally on the irrationality of any faith, but also on the appearance of such irrationality to the world. In this way, Bunyan is really associating skepticism with worldly interests. In other words, according to Bunyan, an atheist may think he is simply following his reason, but he is actually more interested in appearing reasonable and rational to the world.