A Comparative Study on The Journey to theWest and The Pilgrim’s Progress1. IntroductionNecessarily, different cultural characteristics of nationality derive from varieties environment, lifestyle, tradition, faith and appreciation. However, cultures of different nationalities have something in common for people’s thought, emotion, and behavior. As Mr. Meng Zhaoyi points:Human development is a trend which brings about a transnational or trans-regional culture exchanges. Characters of cultures, such as development, synchronism, transmission, enculturation and backwardness make it progresses. The development of culture bursts the restrains of communication. Nowadays, we can not find nothing where a culture is impacted by others. Throughout the world history literature, the suffering processes of believers is one of the main themes of religion works, such as The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Journey to the West. Absolutely the writing of the Pilgrim’s Progress is based on Christianism particularly The Bible, while The Journey to the West is based on Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Similar historical circumstance and religion atmosphere coincidentally make the two authors choose religion subject and the form of imagination to write which makes the works a carrier of religion ideology, salvation concept and people’s acknowledgment and exploration to the other side of the world. The Pilgrim’s Progress is honored as “a perfect work of allegory” by westerner, while the Journey to the West is honored as “a medieval legendary of China”. They are written according to social matters. They criticize on social evils, greatly show the sense of mission social responsibility. The two works differ from each other for their heroes aims to the journey, authors’ attitudes toward rising businessmen and writing techniques. We could have a better understanding of the two works by exploring their similarities and differences.2. Differences of the two novels2.1 Different imagery of namesThe first section of The Pilgrim’s Progress tells a story in form of dream where the christian knows the ruin of hometown from a book. A man called “preacher”warns him of leaving for heaven. Then he starts his journey. The second section of the book tells a story about Christian’s wife, whose name is Woman Christian, taking a journey to heaven with her children. She is guided by a man called Fearless. Based on The Bible, the two sections of The Pilgrim’s Progress has many symbolic names. For example, there are the Pond of Despair, Mountain of Difficulty (difficulties that the christian must to overcome), Village of Doubt, Giant of Despair (the Christian is held back by Giant of Despair at Village of Doubt), and Vanity Fair, Preacher(who guides the journey of Christian) and Mr.Fearless(who guides the journey of Woman Christian).Having suffered from countless difficulties, and dangers, the Christian arrives in heaven, making his dream of salvation come true. He is modeled as an incarnation of virtue and an example of puritans at revolution age. Mr Brave, modeled as a representative for rightness as well. As for negative roles, there are Arrogant, Haughty and so on. They are hated by God according to The Bible. Besides, conceptualized roles are used to imply the figures in real society. For example, Devil Apollyon is a tyrant. Mr “Bashfulness” is a saint when being at outside but a devil when being at home. They are the symbols of evil and guilt. Many names and roles in the book originate from the history of Christianity. For example, the Christian’s four kids, they are Mathew, Samuel, Joseph and Jacob. According to The Bible, Mathew is one of the 12 apprentices of Jesus, Samuel is a famous prophet at judges age, Joseph is the twelfth son of Jacob and Jacob is Jesus’ brother.In The Journey to the West, Tang Monk’s three apprentices represent three kind of bad habits, they are avarice, anger and simpleton. Pig represents people who have a strong desire of avarice. He lust for wealth, beauty, fame, profit, food and sleep. Pig is warned to observe the eight commandments so that he can quit the desire of avariceand gain wisdom. As a result, he is named as “Eight Commandments”. Conversely, Pig fails to observe. Monkey King represents anger, he always wants to control when an accidents happen unfairly. But he will be angry when he is misunderstood and blamed by his master. Being endowed with magic power and having an ability of seventy two metamorphoses, Monkey King is more powerful than Tang Monk, nevertheless, Tang Monk is the master while Monkey King isn’t. When I was a little boy, I couldn’t understand why Tang Monk is the master as he looks so weak, rather than Monkey King is as he is so powerful. But finally I got it after I study Buddhism, which tells me that the ultimate pursuit of Buddhism is not being powerful but to eliminate human’s anger. Monk Sha is a man of simpleton and honesty, being lack of common sense. He has no idea of what is right or wrong. Studying Buddhism can help him avoid confusion.2.2 Different attitudes toward rising bourgeoisieThe Journey to the West was written when capitalism rises, while The Pilgrim’s Progress is written at the time of England bourgeois revolution. Inevitably, rising businessmen are involved in both works. Although the Journey to the West is a story about Tang Dynasty, it presents a situation of flourishing development of capitalism at middle and later Ming Dynasty. Being at the feudal age, Wu Cheng’en, the author, dare not to advocate business activities directly. So he just holds a cautious attitude toward the promotion of capitalism. Yet, we can find the author’s promotion to the rising businessmen in the book. Every destination of the journey owns praise from the author, even pubs are described as paradise. It is a breakthrough that the author equate the lowly-considered business activity with the lofty journey of Tang Monk. For example, when Tang Monk sees a group of businessmen walking on dangerous layer of ice, he says, “Benefit is more important than anything. They risk their life for gaining benefit while my emperor brother be loyal to fame. It makes no difference”. Meanwhile, there is much praise for humanity and aspiration for freedom spirit. Monkey King, whatever he represents in the book, represents the liberation of personality. The author is a person of lower-level. He has a close experience to thebenefit brought by development of bourgeoisie therefore, he advocates the rising bourgeoisie. Some writers of history regard The Journey to the West and The Plum in the Golden Vase as works of two age. But that is incorrect. Greatly The Journey to the West continues to tell the kind of story of The Plum in the Golden Vase. Both the novels have a similar attitude toward rising class.To the rising businessmen, Bunyan accepts and criticizes. If there is no description of Vanity Fair, The Pilgrim’s Progress would be a mere religion work written to exhort. It is the description that presents features of that age. Vanity Fair is described as a materialistic and vile place. There are many goods such as country, desire, happiness, whore, children and anything to be purchased. When the christian and his partner Mr Loyalty buy truth, they are mocked, attacked and even be sentenced to death. In fact, the “Vanity Fair”mirrors the life of England bourgeois noblemen. And is the author, weather or not, an opponent to the capitalism class as he describes the Vanity Fair such a corrupt place? Bunyan had joined the Cromwell’s New Model army and edified with bourgeois ideology. He is not the opponent to capitalism but an opponent to “those people who are opposed to the supreme of God”. Namely, he is opposed to those noblemen who disobeys the edification of God, and the clergy who exploit churches.2.3 Different aims of journeysAlthough the two novels reveal reality by religion, they have different cognition to it, which hat can be explored in protagonists’ aim for their journeys.The Journey to the West is a subverting work for it satires feudal culture of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. And the author expresses his satire by another buddhist and taoist works as well. The Journey to the West is “a work of game”, it contains “sharp realism”, and conveys the truth by games.The satire is radiated by author’s unsatisfied tone to feudalism society. At the period of middle and later Ming Dynasty, emperors become more and more incompetent and corrupt. The country falls down and their people live in misery. That situation generates thoughts of salvation and loyalty that are greatly advocated by the author. Therefore Tang Monk starts hisjourney. However, it is not for himself but for the salvation of all and for his emperor’s everlasting power. Jambudvipa, where Tang Dynasty locates, is a place filled with avarice, slaughter, deception, lies, cheat, ingrate and murder.Obviously the place is not a real place of Tang dynasty. It is a plot conceived to show the degeneration of middle and later period of Ming Dynasty. Faced with that situation, the author wants to find a way to reform, which means to change the situation and people’s soul by good ideologies and moral cultivation.At Bunyan’s age, the emperor of England was a believer of Roman Catholic, and Christian church was badly corrupt. It is not the same as what is described in The Bible. Therefore, what Bunyan wants to do is to correct the wrong reality with his pen. Just as it is written in this book, “Why the christian starts his journey? He is oppressed by the great burden. He worries about the ruin of his hometown by heaven’s fire. He cries, “How can we be saves?” .Although the ways of salvation is different, it differs from the ideologies between China and foreign countries. The aim of The Journey to the West lies in helping from others, while the aim of The Pilgrim’s Progress lies in self-rescue. Anyway, as long as everyone get rescued, all get rescued.3. Similarities of the two novels3.1 Similarity of techniquesThe creation of the two novels. In the novels, romanticism is widely adopted. It expresses authors’feelings and imagination to life, namely the perception and perspective for beauty and ugliness, the true and the false, the good and the evil. In order to transcend the reality, authors have to take peculiar imagination, bold exaggeration and fancy plot to radiate their feeling to real life, because they are reluctant to face the odiousness of reality. There are some common features of romanticism in both novels, for example, fancy circumstances and plots, which makes the two novels popular around the world.Most Christians have an imagination of a paradise. John Milton, exactly,imagines in Paradise Lost, looking far into the distance, the kingdom of heaven looks like an earthly paradise with tall city walls and magnificent buildings.Full of imagination, Bunyan starts to write The Pilgrim’s Progress with a dream, develops the story with a full scroll of fancy circumstances, including fierce fighting, plenty of monsters and so on. The romantic characteristics of the novel are as follows: on the one hand, there are various figures in the book, for example, Monster Apollyon, who imperils the christian at valley of mortification, looks like a pterosaur as well as a fish wearing a coat of scale. His feet look like bear’s paw. His lion-liked big mouth flaming and smoking. On the other hand, there are many unique names by which the author rectify and personify abstract things. For example, there are names of people, Mr.Meek, Loyalty, Timidity, Giant of Despair, names of places, Pool of Despair, Castle of Suspect, Town of Pomp and so on.The Journey to the West reads more splendid than most mystery works before. Its circumstances transfer with the deeds of immortals and monsters, breaking away from time and space. For example, Monkey King uproars in heaven, breaks into Dragon King’s Palace. He would be anywhere at anytime. Humans, deities, animals are oddly-shaped. Everything in the story is endowed with magic power. For example, the description of Monkey King’s cudgel, “it weighs 13500 Jin”, “suddenly it is turned into a needle”(). And Monkey King has a super power of 72 metamorphoses. Ne Zha, is a superhuman with 3 heads and 6 arms. The birds, beasts, even plants can turn into anything with magic power. In a word, that is a world full of magic.3.2 Similarity of religionFor example, the writing pattern of the Pilgrim’s Progress is “original sin-believing-expiation-salvation-favor”, The narrative styles of the two stories follow a narration Bible. The story can be summarized as the following, with original sin, Christian starts his journey to pursue truth. During the process he is lured constantly by other people and things. Finally he clutches the Cross on the “wall of salvation” which means his release from original sin. While The Journey to the West is written according to a Buddhism pattern of “karma-salvation of ascetic-salvation of all-to beimmortal”. Tang monk and his apprentices are punished to be ordinary humans to suffer from 81 difficulties due to their previous crimes. Taking scriptures as their very goal, they start the journey of suffering 81 difficulties. Luckily, when they need help, their immortal friends come to help. Their journey is a process not only to save themselves but also to save all.Both novels tell the story of believer suffering the difficulties in order to realize their supreme goals. The believers are devout and indomitable to their own religion. The christian, hero of The Pilgrim’s Progress,suffers from devils, beauty, wealth abusive power, suicide, betray and so on. However he holds on to march toward heaven. While Monkey king is a hero who eradicate demons, Tang Monk and his fellow apprentices firmly march toward the west. Obviously, the two novels advocate a common doctrine of karma, good and evil, embrace, abstinence, toleration.Based on religion, the two authors take The Bible and the buddhist books as a basis to write.John Bunyan is a devout christian and missionary, mainly receiving education from The Bible. As Elvis Lewis says, “Bunyan’s life experience forms material of the novel while The Bible forms the framework and his genius finally make it”. Bunyan is quite familiar with The Bible as he respectively quotes 160 and 94 metaphors from The Bible in the first and second section of his book. Wu Chengen is not a special buddhist or a taoist, but a intellectual with combined idea of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. As a result, there are Buddha, Bodhisattva(the figures of Buddhism), Jade Emperor, sons of heaven(the figures of Taoism). They are deities in The Journey to the West and once they join together to tackle Monkey King. Then, Tang Monk is modeled as a buddhist who wants to take across sentient beings universally, as well as a stubborn and coward scholar. Monkey King follows Master Puti and later convert to Tang Monk. And there are numerous Confucian classics and taoist parlance in the novel that make The Journey to the West full of features of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Besides, the final result of Tang Monk and his apprentices are getting the scriptures(for Buddhism), to live forever(for Taoism) and continuing to save(for Confucianism). Just as Lindsay comments, Like the words in The Bible, buddhisttexts in the story turn to be vivid.Meanwhile, many ideologies and words of Taoism are much adopted, the most typical of which is the application for ideologies and imagery of the book of changes in the beginning and the end.3.3 Similarities of themesPoignant reality and strong critics are obvious features of the two novels. Religion is a faith including commentary to the world and cognition to supernatural power, as well as a hope deriving from reality.John Bunyan and Wu Chengen have a similar life experience. They have a precise observation as well. Bunyan was born in a poor tinker family. He joined parliamentary army in England Revolution. But that army is a nonconformist denomination being suppressed at the age of dynasty restoration. Sticking to preach religion puts him into prison for 12 years, during the time he wrote the Pilgrim’s Progress, and that is his master work. Besides, he had written many other religion work. Writing with the intention to expose feudalism and pursue freedom and equality made him a representative for lower level believers. Wu Chengen was born in a downfallen merchant family. He was reluctant to write to flatter the authority. As a result, he always failed in the imperial competitive examination. Therefore, he lived a poor life on his writing for a long time. With fairy tales, many of his poetic prose are written to assail the ugliness of society. Those characteristics are largely presented in The Journey to the West. The realism and criticism of the two novels are revealed from flowing aspects.Firstly, both novels have realistic image of the figures. Figures in the two novels, though they are social ones with magic power and sense, they are social ones of reality as well. Those figures can be classified as two kinds. The justice and the evil. Monkey King and the christian are representatives of justice. Being upright, honest, indomitable, believing in justice, brave to struggle, the christian is modeled as an incarnation of virtue, and an example of puritans in the period of revolution. While Monkey King is modeled as a figure of unruliness, energy and power. He resistsviolence. He loves freedom, yearns for pureness and brightness. He is clever and brave. He is the most famous and brilliant hero in mythical literature. There are another conceptualized figures modeled to represent social people of demoralization and evil The Pilgrim’s Progress. For instance, Apollyon is a tyrant, Mr.Corruption is a corrupt official, Ms.Affection is a hypercritical noble woman. There are plenty of monsters in The Journey to the West, White-boned Demon, Bull Demon King, Bear Demon and Yama. They are fierce and cruel ones. They are not only the incarnation of natural power, but also the symbol of feudal autocracy.Secondly, both novels reveal evils of society by telling the experience of heroes as links. As George Bernard Shaw points, the whole story of The Pilgrim’s Progress questions morality and reputation, and condemns evil and crime.“Valley of Disgrace”and Demon Apollyon are modeled to reflect the autocracy of Stuart Dynasty. “Vanity Fair” is a place filled with goods like honor, official position, body and soul, except for truth. And there are murder, cheat and bully as well the Christian is beat up even sentenced to death due to his claim to buy truth. The plot reveals the situation of tyranny and the people’s tough living situation.The difficult living condition is more apparent in The Journey to the West. On the one hand, governors are exposed to be more luxurious. There are feasts arranged with priceless food and wine, including dragon’s liver, phoenix’s marrow, bear gall and ape’s lip and so on. On the other hand, they are corrupted and incompetent. For example, when Osiris amends the book of life and death, he practices favoritism. Even two of important apprentices of the Buddha extorts from Tang Monk and his apprentices when their requirements are declined, and they give Tang Monk fake scriptures, which reveals the cowardice and weakness of the governors.Thirdly, they criticize the injustice of laws. Both novels largely question the institutions and laws. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, the Christian is sentenced after he claims to buy truth. Unexpectedly, the jury are Blindness, Bad Guy and Prurience and the witnesses are Jealousy, Superstition and Flattery. The result of judgment turns out to be the death for Mr Loyalty and the Christian. The plot reflects a real trial of JudgeJeffery, castigating the injustice in real life. While The Journey to the West advocates “retribution for sin”. However it depends on antecedents rather than sin. Monsters can kill without being badly punished if they have antecedents. For example, the lion, the elephant and the rock kill others in human being’s world but they are not punished, and even they are reinstated in office. For the immortals at lower levels, however, once they violate the law, they will definitely be punished.4.ConclusionThe P ilgrim’s Progress and The Journey to the West have an epochal meaning not only because they have similarity in critical thought on religion, but also because they both adopt religious pattern and allegory. The P ilgrim’s Progress describes the process to heaven in a form of dream, while in The Journey to the West tells the journey of Tang Monk an his followers. The former is about the C hristian’s ideology of faith and salvation of soul, while the latter is about the idea of understanding of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.Actually the journeys both of the christian and Tang Monk and his apprentices are journeys for soul. The Kingdom of Heaven or the western heaven are the highest state where we can arrive only by making great efforts and experience great hardship. Therefore both works imply that we should pay more attention to our inner heart and we can achieve our goal by perseverance and persistence.As it describes below, the names of characters and imagination present the authors’ attitudes and views to reality. Those names are full of deep implication.。
