Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Joseph Andrews, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hypocrisy
Lust vs. Chastity
Social Class
Religion and Charity
Summary
Analysis
Dick reads aloud from a story about two friends, Leonard and Paul. Leonard and Paul get separated for fifteen years when Leonard has to go to the East Indies for the army. Meanwhile, Paul stays near home and gets married. Eventually, they are reunited. As Dick reads the story, Abraham Adams occasionally corrects him on his pronunciation.
Abraham Adams is proud of his son Dick and perhaps feels particularly affectionate toward him after Dick survives nearly drowning. Dick’s interest in reading mirrors his father’s own interests, although like Adams’s sermons, the story of Leonard and Paul often twists around without really going anywhere.
Themes
The story of Leonard and Paul is convoluted, with Leonard frequently arguing with his wife and Paul finding ways to separately agree with both Leonard and his wife. Eventually Paul thinks he’s made both of them happy. But one day, by accident, they discover that Paul has been agreeing with both of them behind the other’s back. Just as their argument gets heated, an interruption requires Dick to stop reading the story.
The joke about the story of Leonard and Paul is that it’s very convoluted and probably too complex to make a good children’s story. The fact that the story gets suddenly interrupted (never to be resumed) suggests that the actual plot of Leonard and Paul’s tale isn’t very significant.
Themes
