SOURCE: Knott, John R. “Bunyan and the Cry of Blood.” In Awakening Words: John Bunyan and the Language of Community, pp. 51-67. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Knott examines the violent judgments meted out to sinners in Pilgrim's Progress, theorizing that the severe consequences met by characters in turn reflects the severity of Calvinist thought absorbed by Bunyan.

My point of departure is an episode from the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress [PP] that I have always found disconcerting: Mercy's encounter with three men that she sees “hanged up in irons” by the side of the way. Great-heart responds to her questions by summarizing the case against the three (Simple, Sloth, and Presumption), explaining that they formerly turned pilgrims out of the way by mocking their enterprise and giving “an evil report of the Good Land” that is the object of their pilgrimage...