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Book 2, Chapter 8
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Virtue vs. Vice
Marriage, Romance, and Economics
Appearance vs. Reality
Coming of Age
Storytelling, Literature, and Structure
Summary
Analysis
Allworthy, Bridget, and a lady who is their dinner guest all wait a long time for Captain Blifil, not knowing his fate. After a while, they start to worry, and finally, some servants come bearing the captain’s dead body. Doctors arrive and confirm that the captain is dead but disagree on what caused it. After disposing of the body, the physicians turn their attention to Bridget, believing her to be ill. They treat her for a month for that they call excessive grief. Allworthy buries the captain with an epitaph about how he was a “tender husband” and a “devout Christian.”
This passage is yet another example of dark humor in the novel, as Captain Blifil is married with an epitaph that doesn’t at all reflect who he was as a person—he was in fact a distant husband who was more devoted to greed than to Christianity. This passage reflects how Allworthy’s pattern of trying to the see the best in people can sometimes be absurd, while also showing how the empty way that Captain Blifil led his life culminated in him having a generic gravestone.
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