Everything about The Slough Of Despond totally explained
The
Slough of Despond is a deep
bog in
John Bunyan's novel
Pilgrim's Progress, into which the character Christian sinks under the weight of his
sins and his sense of
guilt. "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's called the Slough of Despond."
The "Slough of Despond" is also referenced in Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale, "The Celestial Railroad". The tale itself is a satirical contrast between Bunyan's, "A Pilgrim's Progress" and the state of society during Hawthorne's times.
At one point, in
Emily Brontë's
Wuthering Heights, the character Mr. Heathcliff likens his son's current state of depression to having been dropped "into a Slough of Despond".
In 1976, in a speech to the Greater London Area Conservative Association party leader,
Margaret Thatcher described Britain as being in a "slough of despond".
An area of wetlands in
Canada is named after this fictional construct, and is located on the Bruce Trail near
Big Bay, Ontario, north of
Owen Sound.
In
Horatio Hornblower: The Even Chance, Midshipmen Archie Kennedy introduces Horatio to his new home: "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 says of her husband Harald, "Kay saw that he was sinking into a Slough of Despond (they had coined this name for his sudden, Scandinavian fits of depression)…"
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. Among other harrowing experiences, the narrator relates: "And we passed through the Slough of Despond."
In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Shanghaied", Squidward is tossed into the "Fly of Despair" by the pirate the Flying Dutchman and falls endlessly past any number of spooky horrors until he pops out into his bedroom when the plot needs him again. The Fly of Despair is a thinly veiled version of a Slough of Despond, accommodated by a children's TV show.
References:
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