《天路历程》英文读后感：Journey, Dream, and Excuse me, The Second Part? The ingenuity and greatness of this book cannot be fully appreciated unless you really open it and start reading it. I still remember how many times I took it down from the shelf of Fudan’s library, flipped through it for a short while, admired the colorful images and the beautiful layout, and then put it back to the shelf, to the oblivion in the dirt of time. ow I finished the reading, eventually. (Applause for myself!) I found myself attracted to it and illuminated by it, especially the first part, for many times. First, the book, as the title suggests, is about a journey. A journey of a man who cares about his soul and seriously thinks about life, freedom, and redemption. His journey, propelled by such solemn queries, and informed by the enlightenment that comes from the Heaven, is a journey to salvation. It is not a smooth one, rather thronged with hazards, struggles, and loneliness. But the man fights squarely with all of them, and he soon discovers that he is not alone, through all the way along. God is with him, helping him, strengthening him, and encouraging him through all kinds of way all the time. Let me do not wait time on this, which I believe must have been discussed abundantly by many scholars and lovers of this book. The thing that impresses me most is that, its ingenious design of plot, especially the naming of all the places and characters. No matter what they are, they are significantly symbolic. They anthropomorphize all the temptations and weaknesses that a human being will encounter on his journey to the “other world.” For the former group, for example, the Valley of the shadow of Death, the vanity fair, the Doubting Castle, and finally, the The River of Death. For the latter, for example, Mr. Feeble-Mind, Much-Afraid,Hypocrisy, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman. They are like mirrors, leading you to reflect on yourself, whether you are like one (or more than one) of them and where you are in your own pilgrim’s progress now. In this sense, a journey is a plot of enlightenment. It leads us to self-recognition as well as an external destination. (It is not hard to see how this narrative strategy spawns the future road movie and similar novels.) The road of the journey is the process of confronting with the outside reality but also discovering our inner selves, which demands overcoming all the adversities, in and out. For Christians, it is even more so because the our final destination—the eternal salvation, comes only through continuous self-discipline in the obedience of God, whose grace and mercy hold us up all the way till the end. Another creative design of the plot is the narrative delivered in the form of a dream. It taps into the fundamental question of the reality of artistic representation. It has been discussed and explored by many philosophers and writers since Plato. I do not care for bothering myself with that now. The dream narrative also distances the author from his story. Because it is a dream, he can disclaim the responsibility for its factuality and any possible affects. My other observance goes to the second part of the book. For me, it is less refined than the first part so that I even doubt its authorship. No matter it is the plot design or narrative sophistication, none of it can match its precedent. For example, the sudden marriages of the boys and the maidens. Although in Bunyan’s time, it is common for a little boy to marry a lady who are elder than him, it is still absurd for me to see Matthew marries Mercy without any mention of their mutual feelings. Perhaps at that time the feelings of the lovers are not important as the opinions of their parents, as in ancient China! The following marriages of other sons and the childbirths are even more cursory in narrative, with only passing notes or sudden appearances. Some scholar has taken the marriages and childbirths as the “the incidents and accidents of everyday life” that add to the “the joys of the pilgrimage”. But in effect (at least for me) they are a plot flaw that significantly mars the convincing power and artistic appeal of the book. Although I really appreciate it that Bunyan focused on those feeble and frail pilgrims including women and children, the real hero of the second part actually is not the pilgrims, but their body guide the Great Heart. He is portrayed in a chivalric manner evoking those images of Medieval knights. But his appearance weights down the power and beauty of the struggles by the frail ones, who could have fighter on their own bravely and stalwartly. Last but not least, the most brilliant of Bunyan’s account in the first part is the metaphor of the “River of the Death.” It describes a grave reality through a graceful activity of crossing a river, a beautiful metaphor of progressing “from this world to that which is to come.” But in the end of the second part, the metaphor is broken by the author’s straight delineation of death, the core of the metonym itself. It comes even shockingly when the Christiana, our heroine, is thrusted in the heart by the messenger of our God with a sharp sword. Yet she is still alive after that in the time before waiting to cross the river! In one word, the second part is so coarse that it seems to be written by a different person, who cannot match both in talent and words with Bunyan. It is ironic to hear some scholar say that “The two parts of The Pilgrim's Progress in reality constitute a whole, and the whole is, without doubt, the most influential religious book ever written in the English language.” lus, Xi Hai's translation is of high quality. |
