The Pilgrim's Progress: A Christian Allegory for All Ages - Essay Sample

Introduction

‘The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World, to that which is to Come’ is a Christian Allegory by John Bunyan written in the year 1678 (Bunyan, 1970). It is one of the essential religious works in English literature. Considering that the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ is a critical work of writing, it has various adaptations. Importantly, a theatrical adaptation is universal and entails the use of material from another artist and re-writing them in a way that focuses on the needs and requirements of a theatre. Thus, it is turned to becoming either a play or a musical. The primary objective of this analysis is to identify the adaptations of the novel, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ by John Bunyan and evaluating their true and creative nature.

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Primarily, literary adaptation is the adapting of a literature source such as a novel, short story, or poem to a different genre such as a film, a stage play or a video game. John Bunyan’s, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ is a novel that describes a story of a Christian who has to face all kinds of challenges before reaching her destination. However, it has been adapted to a film and an opera. The movie, ‘Pilgrim’s Progressed,’ (2019) is one of the adaptations of Bunyan’s novel, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress.’ Importantly, the film is adapted to reflect modern-day occurrences. In particular, it focuses on the distractions, challenges, and perils faced by Christian. One of the similarities between the two films is how the various authors reflected the faithful concept initially relayed in Bunyan’s original literature piece. According to Howard (2019, in Bunyan’s novel, the author describes the extraordinary journey in a bid to find faith as a constant reminder for believers to remain in the narrow and straight path and avoid any forms of deviations. However, the retelling of the story in the adaptive film is limited by the production values. Regardless of this limitation, the film directors and producers manage to ensure that it has a strong execution.

Accordingly, one of the primary strengths of the adaptive film, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ is the use of visuals in the climactic action series. There is vibrancy as the battle of the righteous intimidates that of the enemies. Demons are frequently terrifying the honest people to deviate from their paths of righteousness. In the narration, the film remains close to the original works of Bunyan, and the filmmakers avoid intensive dilution of the text. The plot structure of the author has been copied and replicated in the film. Just like in Bunyan’s original work, the film shows the challenges and uncertainties that the faithful have to endure in their Christian journey. The film still managers to engage with the emotions of the audiences, particularly when Christian is forced to get his way out of a challenging ordeal. The adaptive movie managed to maintain the tenacity, strength, and courage during any awkward moments faced by the faithful, which was also imminent in the original work. The conclusion derived from the analysis of this stage adaptation is that Bunyan knew how to structure the events and properly outline them in his book. In contrast, Fernandez, the film’s director, knew how to showcase it.

Another adaptation is the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The opera is based on the allegory by John Bunyan. The structure of the story relayed in the opera is similar to that of Bunyan. The opera accurately describes the structure and content of the musical piece. The opera relates to Bunyan’s dream vision tale to carry its leaders through a complicated journey of Christian living. However, Vaughan William’s piece evokes and suggests the content instead of enacting, as done by Bunyan (Brunson, 2009). The pilgrim’s dream, in the opera, is enclosed in a metal cage and sequence of doors, walkways, and structures hence creating a shift in the stage space that would allow the audience to view the changing landscape of the Christian journey.

The first act of the opera starts with when Christian meets the evangelist. Some people warn pilgrim away from his journey, but he is determined to continue regardless of the challenges he encounters. The theme of the opera is to show that the pilgrim’s mission is not easy, which is John Bunyan’s primary themes in his novel. The opera’s plot summary is that pilgrim starts his journey by heading to an evangelist. In a valley of humiliation, the pilgrim defeats Apollyon but is wounded but assisted by two beings from heaven. He is imprisoned along the way, walks through mountains, and valleys. He also navigates through the River of Death until he reaches the Celestial City.

Further, since the opera follows the same storyline and structure as the original novel by John Bunyan, The level of emotions relayed to the audience is the same. Importantly, Vaughan Williams was drawn towards the prose of Bunyan’s masterpiece since he was a young person. In the adaptive opera, Vaughan Williams gave his characters a different name. In Bunyan’s original novel, Christian was the main character while in the opera, the soloist used the word pilgrim in place of Christian. The reason for the change of name is to avoid any regular references to Christianity. The musical piece is enticing and enjoyable, but it took several years for the article to gain acceptance as a theatrical piece. Besides, Vaughan Williams did not refer to his work as an opera but rather as a song of morality. From this analysis, it is clear that this adaptive work is creative and utilizes the same structure as john Bunyan’s original piece.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the novel, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ has been adapted to a stage play and opera. The adaptations are creative and satisfactory and reflect John Bunyan’s original literature accurately. The structure employed in both the film and the opera is the same, and the emotions used to attract the audience. Primarily, the two adaptations discussed in this paper reflect the structure and thoughts of the original author, John Bunyan, and no significant deviations are witnessed. In the opera, the variance could be the change of the main character’s name from Christian to Pilgrim. In the film, the film director just relayed and showcased Bunyan’s thoughts in a movie exactly as they were in the book.

References

Brunson, B. R. (2009). Ralph Vaughan William's the pilgrim's progress: Problems and solutions for future performances. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2193&context=thesesdissertations

Bunyan, J. (1970). The Pilgrims Progress: Pt. 1. Menston: Scolar Press.

Howard, C. (2019, April 17). Film Review: ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress.’ Variety. https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-pilgrims-progress-review-1203191406/