A Comparison of the Themes of The Journey to the West and The Pilgrim’s Progress

The Journey to the West, which tells the journey of four Buddhist monks who have overcome many hardships for the purpose of arriving in the West and asking for the Buddhist Scriptures, is one of the “four classics” of China. The Pilgrim’s Progress tells the difficult journey of Christian from the "City of Destruction", his hometown to the "Celestial City". Despite of the sameness of the two stories, that is, the strong religious atmosphere, there are still obvious differences between them. This article tries to compare the themes of the Journey to the West and the Pilgrim’s Progress. At the beginning, we will discuss the themes of the two novels. Then we will compare the differences of the themes and will discover that both of them have revealed the religious belief of “learn virtue and unlearn vice” and criticized the current society. But the aims of the journeys and the attitudes to the new rising class of the authors are of remarkable differences. The purpose of this article is to help the readers appreciate the two stories better, and to have better understanding of the reasons of such differences.