John is the main character in C.S. Lewis’s allegorical novel The Pilgrim’s Regress. Published in 1933, the book traces John’s journey as he searches for a distant island and encounters people and ideas representing different philosophies.
The novel was Lewis’s first published work after his conversion to Christianity. Its subtitle, An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism, signals its aim: it presents a Christian intellectual and spiritual defense through an imaginative pilgrimage.
Lewis used the name John for the fictional traveler, while “Jack” was the familiar name by which he was commonly known in private life. That difference makes this a more precise question than asking for Lewis’s own nickname.
The book was influenced by John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, but it is not a retelling of Bunyan’s story. Lewis’s allegory reflects debates of his own era, including atheism, materialism, idealism, and competing accounts of human desire.