The Pilgrim's Progress and the Hero's Journey

Not every story is Star Wars

The Hero’s Journey has dominated our thinking about story since George Lucas took the idea put forth by Christopher Vogler and turned it into a little movie called Star Wars. I think it is fair to say that since then, the Hero’s Journey model of story and its derivatives have dominated popular fiction, particularly in fantasy.

The Hero’s Journey is a model derived from a study of world mythologies and described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The soundness of Campbell’s scholarship has been questioned, but the influence of his idea is beyond doubting. The model is essentially this: The hero is living in the normal world. He hears the call to adventure. At first, he resists, but then he goes, crossing the threshold into the wild. There he meets a mentor, finds companions, faces challenges, enters the inmost cave, fights the dragon, and then returns home with the treasure. There’s more to it than that, but that's the basic shape that shows up in most stories based on the model.

It is, if you like, a maturation plot. The hero is initially unprepared to meet the dragon. At first, he refuses even to go, and when he does, he must acquire friends, tools, and the advice of a mentor in order to grow in maturity and skill, to acquire courage, and become ready for the fight. His newfound fitness is then proved by killing the dragon and taking the treasure back to the tribe. The boy becomes a man and does manly deeds.

But there are other models of story. One of these is what I will call the Pilgrim’s Progress after John Bunyan’s classic allegory. In many ways it is an inversion of the hero’s journey. It is the journey not of a hero, but of a sinner, and if the arc of the hero is an arc of attainment, the arc of the sinner is an arc of atonement.

Both models begin in the normal world. But while the hero is initially unworthy and must attain worthiness, the pilgrim is initially worthy and loses his worthiness by sinning. The hero leaves the normal world in answer to the call to adventure. The pilgrim is expelled from the normal world, or expels himself from it, by an unworthy act, by a sin. The pilgrim’s arc, the arc of atonement, is then one of recognition, confession, reparation, and return.

As with the hero, there may be mentors and friends met along the way who assist the pilgrim on his journey, and also enemies who seek to divert him from the way. Like the Hero’s Journey, the Pilgrim’s Progress ends with a return to the community. The hero returns by the path of attainment, the pilgrim by the path of atonement. The Hero’s Journey sees the hero standing proud over the corpse of his slain foe. The Pilgrim’s Progress sees the pilgrim kneeling humbly before the cross of his slain God. Or if not that, kneeling humbly before those he has separated himself from, begging to be welcomed back.

The Hero’s Journey is communitarian in nature. The hero leaves the community in order to serve the community, either by ridding it of danger or bringing back some boon or treasure that enriches the community or makes it more secure, though in our individualistic age, the return is sometimes omitted and the hero keeps the fruits of their triumph for themselves, in a particularly modern act of heroic selfishness.

The Pilgrim’s Progress is also communitarian in nature. The pilgrim’s sin is a sin precisely because it is an act of separation. The pilgrim’s atonement is an atonement precisely because it enables them to return. This may account for the Pilgrim’s Progress story being less popular today, when separating oneself from the community and shaking off all obligations to others is considered an heroic act, boasted of on many back cover blurbs.

The Pilgrim’s Progress structure may sound didactic and preachy, but it is actually a very common form found in works we would not think of as either didactic or preachy. It is, for instance, the structure of Pride and Prejudice, a novel named, we should notice, for a pair of sins. Both pride and prejudice are sins particularly noted for creating separation from a community. Both Lizzy and D’Arcy begin in a position of worthiness, D’Arcy by his social position. Lizzy by her wit and charm. Both sin against the other, and while neither becomes entirely a social outcast as a result, divisions are created, and Lizzy and D’Arcy are exiled from their proper relationship with each other. Both must follow the arc of atonement, of recognition, confession, reparation, and return, before they can overcome the estrangement created by their sins so that they can marry.

There is a reason that marriage is the satisfactory ending to so many novels, both of the lighter kind and the more substantial. It is because it represents the pilgrim’s return and reunion with the society they have offended by their sin. There is no greater sign of acceptance and union than a vow of marriage. It is a perfect resolution for a pilgrim’s progress story. Even a religious vocation, an equal act of acceptance and union, is portrayed as a form of marriage. For Christians, the image of the Church is that of a bride uniting herself to Christ the bridegroom. When a woman enters a religious order, she is said to become a bride of Christ.

The romance novel could then, if it chose, become the highest expression of the Pilgrim’s Progress story arc. Alas, it generally departs from its great progenitor in omitting the sins of the bride, and more often than not, the sins of the groom as well, instead attributing sin to those who stand in the way of the match.

This is the answer to the question of why, despite the fact that the literati tend to look down on the romance novel as one of the lowest forms of entertainment, Pride and Prejudice, a romance novel, is considered by many the greatest novel ever written, and ranked very highly by many more. In drama, the most profound of reconciliations requires the most profound of estrangements, and the most profound estrangement is that which is caused by sin. Indeed, a good definition of sin is that it is an act of estrangement. A great romance novel requires that both parties sin, and sin gravely, for only their own sins, not accident or the conniving of others, can make the estrangement as profound as it needs to be to make a great drama. It is thus that a romance novel can be either the most trivial or the most profound of literary products.

In discussing the difference between the Hero’s Journey and the Pilgrim’s Progress, we need to make a distinction between a sin and a flaw. It is commonly said that a character has to have a flaw. Everyone has flaws, of course, but we are not talking about incidental flaws here, but flaws as a necessary element of the drama, something that drives the plot. In drama, a flaw is some lack of capacity. The hero sets out on their journey needing to gain abilities in order to face the dragon. Whatever abilities they lack at the beginning are their flaws. It is clearly not a good Hero’s Journey story if the hero sets out already possessing all the abilities they need to slay the dragon. In that case, there is nothing but a fight with a foregone conclusion preceded by a lot of tedious travelling. No, the journey must be one in which the capacities required to face the dragon are acquired, and therefore the hero must begin without those capacities, which is to say, with respect to their role as hero, with flaws.

But a flaw is not a sin. A flaw may in some cases lead the character into sin, but it is not a sin in itself. And insofar as a sin can be explained by a flaw, it is less culpable and therefore makes for a less dramatic Pilgrim’s Progress story. A sin is not a flaw but a deliberate act of estrangement. The protagonist of a Pilgrim’s Progress story need not have flaws, therefore, because the drama does not require flaws. What the drama requires is a sin. This might be a sin that estranges one person from another, one that estranges a person from their community, or one that estranges a person from God. A person replete with capabilities of every kind can still commit sins. Indeed, replete capability makes their sins all the more grievous. They had every means to do better.

We should also note that a sin is not a mistake. As much as modern people who are caught doing something wrong will confess to having “made a mistake,” a mistake and a sin are entirely different things. A mistake is when you attempt an action, miscalculate, and fail because of your miscalculation. You could be acting selfishly or generously when you miscalculate. Your motives could be as pure as the driven snow, but if you screw up and hurt people, that is a mistake, not a sin. In drama, a mistake is a weak contrivance without the dramatic potential of a flaw or a sin. At best, a mistake is a device for illustrating the presence of a flaw.

A sin has more drama than a mistake because a sin is an act of estrangement. It is an act where you deliberately violate whatever covenants bind you to others, be that friends, the community, or God. An honest mistake is never a sin. The intent was not estrangement. Claiming that a sin was a mistake, however, is an act of estrangement, a failure to acknowledge your fault and to seek genuine reconciliation with those you have estranged yourself from. A good Pilgrim’s Progress story requires neither a flaw nor a mistake, but a sin.

The Pilgrim’s Progress is not the easiest story to tell. The attraction of the Hero’s Journey story is obvious. The reader can identify with the hero, fighting evil for the sake of good and returning from the battle to the adulation of their people. It is an enjoyable sensation to imagine oneself in the shoes of Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford as Carrie Fisher, in a form-fitting and rather low-cut white gown, leans forward to place medals around their necks to the cheers of the assembled multitude after they have blown up the Death Star.

The Pilgrim’s Progress story is more challenging. The protagonist is, at some point, going to sin, and sin seriously. Who wants to imagine themselves a sinner? The author would be well advised to give the protagonist some very appealing characteristics to get the reader hooked before they commit their sin. We are certainly very attached to Lizzy Bennet before her sin becomes plain to us. Indeed, since the sin of D’Arcy is more obvious, and directed against the likable Lizzy, we might, if we are not paying attention, miss the fact that Lizzy sins also.

However, the Pilgrim’s Progress model of story is universal. People of all faiths and none know the experience of estranging themselves from friends, family, or community and needing to acknowledge their fault and find a way to win their way back into the friendship, the family, or the community. Only the most ardent individualist (of whom, alas, there are many in today’s literary establishment) would regard it as a virtue to separate oneself from all covenants and obligations, and an act of cowardice or weakness to seek reconciliation.

The Pilgrim’s Progress model of transgression, separation, and reconciliation is a much more common part of our lives than the heroic model of setting off into the wilderness to slay dragons and win treasure. Why then does the Hero’s Journey story seem much more common today?

Marshal McLuhan warned us that the medium is the message. That is, every part of how the story is told and transmitted contains meaning that influences how we receive the story as a whole. The modern habit of reading, which stresses identification with the protagonist, strongly leans towards the journey of the blameless, if flawed, hero or heroine. However, this can make for a rather monotonous and predictable story.

The Pilgrim’s Progress model offers a wider range of stories. But it can be harder to identify with the protagonist because of their sin. These stories can be easier to take when there is more distance between the reader and the protagonist. And identifying with the protagonist is certainly not the only mode of reading a novel. We might see this as something of a spectrum on which I will identify four major points: identity, affectionate attachment, sympathetic detachment, and clinical detachment.

On one end, we have complete identification with the protagonist, where the reader is essentially seeing themselves as the character. This is the mode that the writing schools tend to insist on today, but because the medium is the message this tends to exclude many story models.

Next is affectionate attachment, which is a type of engagement in which the character is seen as a friend. The reader develops a deep affection for the character, but sees them as someone distinct from themselves. This allows for a wider range of character types, since we can feel affectionate attachment for a wide range of people, even sinners.

Next is sympathetic detachment. Here the character is observed as one might watch people on the street, not with an eye to forming an attachment or friendship with them, but with a sympathetic interest in them as fellow human beings.

Finally there is clinical detachment, in which the reader observes the character as a psychological case study, reacting with fascination at the details of their lives and motivations, but with no sense of fellow-feeling.

A well-rounded reader should be able to engage with a character in all of these modes when they are well executed and appropriate to the story being told. Most of us probably have our preferences, though. Certainly, my preferred mode is affectionate attachment, and secondarilly sympathetic detachment. I have little time for clinical detachment, mostly because it tends to be used for stories in the psychological domain rather than the moral domain. I’m not a big fan of identity either, and this is not helped by this being the default mode of so many modern stories even when that mode does not fit the story being told.

But my preferences in this may have a lot to do with my preference for Pilgrim’s Progress stories. Pilgrim’s Progress stories are best told in the mode of affectionate attachment or sympathetic detachment. (Note, though, that these modes are not exclusive to Pilgrim’s Progress stories. They can be used for many other story types as well.)

And of course, while the author can design a book for one mode of engagement, they cannot prevent readers from engaging with it in another mode. I would say that Pride and Prejudice is designed for affectionate attachment, but I’m certain many modern readers read it in the mode of identity, identifying with Lizzy, of course.

It is also true that an author does not have to design a book exclusively for one mode of engagement. Indeed, it is a virtual certainty that the reader will engage with different characters in different modes. Most minor characters will not be on the page often enough to invite identification. Indeed, if the book is designed for identification with one character, the other characters must necessarilly be designed for other modes of engagement. You can, on the other hand, write a book that is designed for affectionate attachment to more than one character, and a book designed for sympathetic detachment must almost certainly treat its entire cast this way. Clinical detachment, on the other hand, tends to be more individualistic, like identification, with a single object of study, and other characters treated largely as props.

Our intensely individualistic age has seemingly pushed literature, and perhaps readers too, to the extremes of the spectrum, to identification on one hand and clinical detachment on the other hand (largely in literary fiction). Writers and readers with a more communitarian vision of life might be more attracted to the middle of the spectrum. I would also say that the more individualist modes are more apt to make us vain and aloof. It is in the middle that we are more likely to find stories that make us wise and brave. It is, after all, when we live with others and acknowledge our obligations towards them that we most need to be wise and brave.

I write romances. Pilgrim’s Progress romances.

Despite the obvious advantages of writing a Hero’s Journey story today, the muse only seems to whisper Pilgrim’s Progress stories to me. There are spoilers ahead, though it is my view that if a book can be spoiled by revealing the plot, it is not a good book. After all, a good book is one you want to read more than once, when clearly, after the first time, you know the plot already. The joy of a good story lies not in surprise but in engagement, and just as one prefers to seek the company of a good companion more than once, so one may seek the company of a good book more than once. But in any case, you have been warned. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Wistful and the Good is, as many people have pointed out, a romance. Elswyth, the main character, is betrothed since birth to the son of a local nobleman. But as she prepares for her wedding, she meets and falls for the son of a Norse trader. Torn between the two, she commits a grave sin, promising herself to the boorish nobleman and that same evening, drunk and sad, offering to lie with the trader’s son. This betrayal leads to death and dishonor, and Elswyth is forced into exile. It is a romance, but a tragic one.

St. Agnes and the Selkie finds a bruised and repentant Elswyth in hiding in Whitby Abbey where she is courted by Eardwulf, the King of Northumbria. But we also meet Mother Wynflaed, the abbess, who takes Elswyth in, names her Agnes, and keeps her secret. Wynflaed’s sin against her community is a preference for Agnes, whom she sees as the daughter she never had. It is romance, but a tragic one, which ends with Elswyth exiled once again.

In The Needle of Avocation, we find Elswyth’s younger, plainer sister, Hilda, separating herself from family and community by the sin of resentment over everyone’s clear preference for the missing Elswyth. Hilda, however, finds her reconciliation in friendship and romance, though at the cost of a seemingly irreparable breach with her ambitious mother. It is a romance, and a happy one, but without a perfect reconciliation.

In The Wanderer and the Way, Astorian nobleman Theodemir seeks atonement for his lecherous and drunken past in a long pilgrimage home from Rome to Asturias, but finds no welcome when he returns home. It requires a second pilgrimage, undertaken to save Agnes, who has despaired of her own reconciliation, and to set her feet on the road home. It too is a romance, though again a doomed one, with a reconciliation of another kind. (And if I live long enough and the muse does not desert me, Elswyth will find her own reconciliation in the final book of the series.)

In The Wrecker’s Daughter, Hannah Pendarves sins mightily. She murders a man in the first chapter, at the age of 12, only the beginning of a campaign of theft, deceit, and murder. Still, there is a road back even for the Black Witch of Cornwall. And yes, this too is a romance, though again a doomed one, and again with a reconciliation of another kind.

Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight seems at first like a hero’s journey, with Isabel finding a way to kill the Elf Knight who kidnapped and meant to kill her. But her sin is to take for herself the Elf Knight’s horse, sword, and horn, by which she is swiftly enchanted, forcing her separation from her friends and community, to whom she has become a mortal danger. Even she will find a path to reconciliation in the end, through the love of a friend. And yes, even this is a romance.

There you have it then, the Pilgrim’s Progress story structure. It has a long and rich tradition. I hope you will give a chance to my own contributions to it. If not for yourself, they may also make appropriate Christmas gifts for people you know, both the sinners and the saints.