The Slough of Despond (/ˈslaʊ ... dɪˈspɒnd/ or /ˈsluː/;[1] "swamp of despair") is a fictional bog in John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, into which the protagonist Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them.
It is described in the text:[2]
This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.
The "Slough of Despond" may have been inspired by Squitch Fen, a wet and marshy area near his cottage in Harrowden, Bedfordshire, which Bunyan had to cross on his way to church in Elstow, or "The Souls' Slough" on the Great North Road between Tempsford and Biggleswade.[3]
- ^ "Definition of SLOUGH OF DESPOND". Merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
- ^ John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, edited with an introduction by Roger Sharrock, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), 46; James Thomas paraphrases it: "It is the low ground where the scum and filth of a guilty conscience, caused by conviction of sin, continually gather, and for this reason it is called the Slough of Despond.", Pilgrim's Progress in Today's English, James H. Thomas, ed., (1964), 18.
- ^ "Sites in Bedfordshire Thought to Have Inspired the Landscape of The Pilgrim's Progress", Bedford Museum