en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Divorce
1 correction found
in which the protagonist dreams of judgment day in the House of the Interpreter
This misdescribes Bunyan’s book. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian visits the Interpreter’s House; he is shown a man there who recounts a dream of Judgment Day, but Christian himself is not the one dreaming it there.
Full reasoning
This sentence compresses two different things from The Pilgrim’s Progress into one incorrect claim.
In Bunyan’s book, Christian goes to the House of the Interpreter and is shown a series of instructive scenes. One of those scenes involves another man who says he has dreamed that Judgment Day has come. The protagonist, Christian, is therefore not the person who “dreams of judgment day in the House of the Interpreter.”
A public-domain text of the relevant passage states that “Christian went on until he came to the house of the Interpreter” and later that the Interpreter led him to “a chamber where there was one rising out of bed”; that man then says, “I thought that the day of judgment was come.” Likewise, Third Millennium Ministries’ retelling says Christian is taken into a chamber where “there was a man rising quickly out of bed” who explains, “I thought that the day of judgment was come.”
So the article’s wording is inaccurate: the Judgment Day dream belongs to a man shown to Christian at the Interpreter’s House, not to the protagonist himself.
2 sources
- 1.1.5 The House of the Interpreter
Christian went on till he came at the house of the Interpreter... he took Christian by the hand again and led him into a chamber where there was one rising out of bed... 'I thought that the day of judgment was come.'
- Pilgrim's Progress The House of the Interpreter (HTML)
Christian went on until he came to the house of the INTERPRETER... he led him into a chamber where there was a man rising quickly out of bed... 'I thought that the day of judgment was come.'