America's national epic was not written in meter and verse. Nor, for that matter, was it written by an American. Yet The Pilgrim's Progress is nonetheless the primal American story, the account of our mad flight from order and lonely quest for grace.
Hemmed in by civilization, resentful of kin, a man strikes out for the wild, hoping to shed his burden of guilt. He has gone by many names—Natty, Ishmael, Huck, Sal—but the name Bunyan gave him was his first: Christian. This book will make a Traveller of thee, Bunyan warned, and we have been on the road ever since.
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