Slough of Despond
The Slough of Despond (pronounced /ˈslaʊ əf dɨˈspɒnd/) ("swamp of despair") is a deep bog in John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, into which the character Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them. It is described in the text:
'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.'[1]
The images Bunyan uses in The Pilgrim's Progress may have been reflections of images from his own world. In this instance the "Slough of Despond" may be Squitch Fen, a wet and mossy area near his cottage in Harrowden that he had to cross on his way to church in Elstow, or "The Souls' Slough" on the "Great North Road" between Tempsford and Biggleswade.[2]
Allusions in Other Literature
It has been referred to frequently in subsequent literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale The Celestial Railroad is a satirical contrast between Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Hawthorne's perception of the current state of society. In Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights the character Mr. Heathcliff likens his son's state of depression to having been dropped "into a Slough of Despond". In Horatio Hornblower: The Even Chance, by C. S. Forester, Midshipman Archie Kennedy describes Hornblower's new home as "His Majesty's ship of the line Justinian, known elsewise among her intimates as the good ship Slough of Despond." In Mary McCarthy's novel The Group (1954), "Kay saw that [her husband, Harald] was sinking into a Slough of Despond (as they termed his sudden, Scandinavian fits of depression)…" W. Somerset Maugham alludes to the Slough in his book Of Human Bondage, where in a letter to the protagonist, Philip Carey, the failed poet Cronshaw details that he has "hopelessly immersed [himself… in] the Slough of Despond," referring to his poverty. In John Steinbeck's novel, "Sweet Thursday" (also 1954), Mack describes Doc's melancholic condition in suggesting that his fellow denizens of the Palace Flophouse help him out, using a punning conflation of slang and Bunyan: "Gentlemen [ . . . ] let us highly resolve to get Doc's ass out of the sling of despond" (79). In Harlan Ellison's short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967) the last five surviving humans are tortured by a godlike artificial intelligence named AM. The narrator relates how, among other harrowing experiences, "We passed through the Slough of Despond."[3] In Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches, a grateful Tribulation Periwinkle remarks that she feels "as did poor Christian [ . . . ] on the safe side of the Slough of Despond."
Allusions in placenames
An area of wetlands in Canada located on the Bruce Trail near Big Bay, Ontario, north of Owen Sound is named for this fictional place.
A quarry site near Symington in South Ayrshire has the Slough Burn flowing through it and on Ordnance Survey maps is marked as the Slough of Despond.
Allusions in media
Mentioned in City and Colour's 2011 song 'Northern Wind' from the album "Little Hell"
"I'm the darkest hour just before the dawn I'm slowly sinking into the Slough of Despond"
Notes
- ^ 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
- ^ Plot summary of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream on About.com
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
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