Tristram Shandy: Book 3: Chapters 15-21 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.