Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tristram Shandy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Fiction, and Storytelling
Language and Comprehension
Travel, Space, and Time
Sexuality and Propriety
Science, Technology, and the Enlightenment
Summary
Analysis
Chapter 15. Tristram explains that Dr. Slop, reaching into his bag, pulled out his forceps in the same manner than an ancient orator would pull a baby out of their mantle. Dr. Slop, however, clumsily fumbles the end of this oratorical gesture, pulling out his “squirt” along with his forceps before finishing his sentence. Toby, aghast, cries out and asks Dr. Slop if children are born with a squirt.
Tristram includes the “squirt,” a made-up medical tool, along with Dr. Slop’s other equipment, both setting up a lewd joke and mocking the doctor. Toby, ignorant as ever about sex, is horrified, suggesting the squirt has some kind of unseemly function.
Themes
Chapter 16. Dr. Slop, Toby, and Walter squabble as Dr. Slop practices using his forceps on Toby’s hands, experimenting before he attempts to extract Tristram. Dr. Slop’s clumsiness casts doubt on his ability to successfully bring Tristram out feet-first.
The fact that Dr. Slop has to practice using his forceps on Toby’s hands already raises doubts about his qualifications, suggesting that perhaps Mrs. Shandy was right to prefer the midwife and her traditional methods to the educated but bumbling doctor.
Themes
Chapter 17. Dr. Slop and the midwife argue viciously, unable to agree if it’s Tristram’s hip or his head that is crowning. Much to Walter’s worry, Dr. Slop brushes off any concerns and heads upstairs to Mrs. Shandy’s room.
In portraying Dr. Slop’s comical ignorance and self-confidence, Tristram suggests that modern medicine may not be much wiser than traditional alternatives.
Themes
Chapter 18. Walter and Toby stay in the parlor. Walter expresses his amazement at how slowly the two hours and ten minutes since Dr. Slop’s arrival has passed. Tristram requests the reader’s full attention for the remainder of the chapter. Walter’s amazement, it turns out, is feigned, and he fully intends to lecture Toby on the metaphysics of time and duration. Before he can begin, however, Toby responds that the effect of duration is due to the succession of human ideas. Walter, who was excited to begin another philosophical diatribe, is annoyed. He presses Toby to explain his ideas in more detail, but Toby is unable to do so. Quoting Locke, Walter expounds on duration. This thoroughly confuses Toby, who clumsily tries to make sense of Walter’s lecture using military metaphors. When Toby compares his mind to a smoak-jack, Walter refuses to continue the discussion.
Walter and Toby’s discussion of time recalls Tristram’s earlier defense of his storytelling: because humankind’s experience of time cannot be separated from human perception, the “realism” of time in storytelling is merely a matter of engaging the listener. Toby in typical fashion stumbles upon a profound truth when he says that the experience of time is just a consequence of perception, echoing popular eighteenth-century philosophical arguments. Toby’s comparison of his mind to a smoak-jack, a device for turning a spit-roast, further supports Tristram’s theory that human thinking is driven by unconscious passions just as much as by logic and reason.
Themes
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Chapter 19. Tristram mourns Toby’s inability to understand Walter, as Walter was in one of his “best explanatory moods,” the brothers’ conversation about time would have been a great one, but Walter’s fickleness got the best of him.
Walter’s prickly character is as much an obstacle to the brothers’ discussion as Toby’s ignorance, as he lacks the patience to help his brother understand.
Themes
Chapter 20. Walter, despite refusing to continue the conversation, cannot get the image of Toby’s mind as a smoak-jack out of his mind. He silently mulls over the idea until he falls asleep. Toby quickly follows suit. As Dr. Slop, the midwife, and Mrs. Shandy are all busy, Tristram resolves to make use of this chapter to write the preface to his book.
Walter, while unable to make sense of it, recognizes the profundity of Toby’s comment. The problem is, as always, one of language, as the brothers are unable to truly communicate what they mean to each other. Tristram subtly mocks his father and uncle’s debate about time by modestly claiming to use the next chapter to write a preface while they are asleep—as the author of the book, he has all the time in the world.
Themes
Tristram’s preface begins with a refusal to introduce the book, which must speak for itself. Describing his efforts, Tristram explains that he only aims to write a good book full of wit and judgment. This, according to some philosophers, is a contradiction in terms, but Tristram dismisses this objection by comparing wit and judgment to farting and hiccupping. Addressing both his critics and his favorite philosophers, Tristram expresses his desire to saturate the reader with wit and judgment. He admits, of course, that such extremes of wit would reduce everything to sarcasm. Likewise, so excess judgment would lead all people to mutual disdain. Tristram acknowledges that, perhaps luckily, this dream of his is impossible, as wit and judgment are both limited by human capabilities. He wonders how wit and judgement can fulfill society’s needs if this is the case.
Tristram’s “preface” addresses one of the key questions of his book, and of the Enlightenment: how do human passions and reason coexist and interact with each other? Wit, or comedy, was frequently denigrated and seen as a less desirable quality than judgement. Tristram disagrees with the assertion that wit (comedy) is a less desirable quality than judgment. Instead, he believes that the two qualities are equally necessary and. They also both draw on conscious and unconscious thinking. Tristram’s comparison of wit and judgment to farting and hiccupping, while comical, reveals his belief in the deeply mysterious nature of the mind and the need to approach it as a game to play rather than a problem to solve.
Themes
Tristram expounds on how in the cold, northern parts of the world, from Scandinavia to central Asia, only a little judgment is needed, and no wit at all. In the tropics, on the other hand, there is plentiful wit but little judgment. This, Tristram argues, proves that wit and judgment are proportional to the necessities of life, and are given to people by God. Tristram then lists the ways that society has failed to grasp this truth. He stops short at including the clergy as an example, wary of criticizing them, and returns to his point: that wit and judgment are two fundamental pieces of human personality that belong together.
Tristram’s theory that wit and judgement are distributed geographically satirizes eighteenth-century theories of human development, toying with the idea that human reason is conditioned by the natural environment. Tristram does not disagree with this argument, but his conclusion that the vast majority of people are mostly lacking in wit and judgement alike mocks the self-seriousness of natural philosophers.
Themes
Tristram cites the ornamental knobs on his chair as a metaphor for wit and judgement, pointing out that while neither are strictly necessary for the chair to function, it would look much worse without them, or with just one. Tristram gently criticizes Locke for misunderstanding the relationship between wit and judgment and thereby deepening the confusion surrounding the subject. He then resolves to return to his narrative, pointing out that while he has no quarrel with serious—and self-serious—philosophers, he is not writing this book for them.
Tristram’s comical metaphor further underscores the joke he is playing on the reader and the fun he is poking at philosophy. Indeed, while Tristram has adopted the language of philosophical argument to write this chapter, he concludes by pointing out that his book is a work of fiction, not philosophy, and therefore should not be held to philosophical standards. For Tristram, the goal of writing—whatever the subject—is not to discover “the truth,” but to play with language and its possibilities.
Themes
Chapter 21. Tristram recounts Walter’s constantly foiled efforts to fix the squeaky hinge on the parlor door, a perennial problem that constantly frustrates Walter despite its easy solution.
Tristram’s explanation of his father’s struggles with the squeaky hinge foreshadows the door opening and interrupting Walter and Toby’s nap.
Themes
