How The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn drew on The Pilgrim's Progress
A documented line of influence: Mark Twain demonstrably engaged John Bunyan’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan · 1678
EnlightenmentThe influenced
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · 1884
The Age of the NovelRelevance
5/10
On The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’s page
- Huck picks this very book up in the Grangerfords' parlor (Chapter 17) and pronounces it "interesting, but tough"
- Twain put it there on purpose — he owned Bunyan and even called an earlier book The New Pilgrim's Progress — using the pious classic to mock a feuding family that brings rifles to the pew
- Read Bunyan first and the joke sharpens: the model of the righteous journey, propped up in a house that has lost the thread
On The Pilgrim's Progress’s page
- Twain knew this book intimately — he owned Bunyan's complete works and a facsimile first edition, and titled his own travelogue The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress
- In Huckleberry Finn he plants it by name in the Grangerfords' parlor, where Huck finds it "interesting, but tough"
- It's a deliberate, barbed prop — the great book of Christian pilgrimage sitting in the home of a family that carries guns to church