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 8. Tristram must clear something up with the reader before Trim continues. Though he has promised chapters on chambermaids and buttonholes, he has been told that these subjects are potentially immoral, and so he hopes that the reader will accept the previous chapter on chambermaids, green gowns, and hats instead.
Tristram’s coy admission is, of course, a joke. He has shown that is he both perfectly happy to discuss “immoral” subjects, and that, as the author, he is under no obligation to give the reader his thoughts on every subject he promises to discuss.
Themes
Chapter 9. Trim continues, considering how many people having died since the household last saw Bobby, and how many more will die before that time next year. Trim claims that even at their best people are destined for “corruption” and death. He then comfortingly puts his hand on Susannah’s shoulder, but she quickly shakes off.
Trim’s grand proclamations about mortality, while comically out of place in the kitchen and in front of his audience, further demonstrate his penchant for both speechmaking and dramatic, esoteric ideas about the nature of life.
Themes
Chapter 10. Trim continues, boasting that he does not care about death and is prepared to meet it bravely in battle. Obadiah responds that death is much scarier in a house than on the battlefield. Jonathan, meanwhile, does not mind death while driving the carriage, and Susannah believes death is best in bed. Trim then says he pities Toby the most, expecting that his master will be depressed for some time, like he was after the death of Le Fever. The servants all praise Toby’s kindheartedness, and Trim says that if he knew for certain that Tom was dead, he would leave everything to Toby and begins to cry. The other servants ask Trim to tell them the story of Le Fever.
Each of the servants’ visions of how they would best like to die, according to their positions and personalities, emphasizes the universality and universal mystery of death. Trim’s comment about Toby underscores how death is most difficult not for the deceased but the people closest to them. Trim both recalls the fate of his brother Tom and that of Le Fever, foreshadowing Tristram’s rendition of the story of Le Fever in the next volume.
Themes
Chapter 11. Tristram, comparing himself to a Sphinx, realizes that he has forgotten his mother as completely as if he had been born in Egypt. He then offers the reader several half-finished riddles on truth and storytelling.
Tristram combines a sophisticated metaphor with a silly joke as he playacts as the Sphinx, a mythical guardian that speaks in riddles; the Sphinx also happens to be located in Egypt, which in the eighteenth century was synonymous with the exotic Middle East.
Themes
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Chapter 12. Returning to Mrs. Shandy eavesdropping outside the parlor door, Tristram explains that hearing Toby’s question about Cornelius Gallus. she assumes that he and Walter are talking about her. Walter has already moved on to the subject of Socrates, however, drawing on his own unpublished manuscript, which Tristram promises to publish later. He is summarizing Socrates’s self-defense before the judges to Toby. Tristram traces the history of Socrates’s philosophical inspirations and followers, from India through the Middle East to Greece and Rome, and finally to England.
Mrs. Shandy’s misunderstanding of Walter’s lament as the revelation of some kind of secret is both a comical scene in itself and a comment on reading—which, as Tristram would have it, is always a kind of misreading. With this in mind, the reader should be skeptical of Walter’s interpretation of Socrates. Tristram’s subsequent discussion of the lineage of Socrates’s thought, who along with other classical philosophers was a major inspiration for the Enlightenment, casts doubt on other followers of Socrates too.
Themes
Chapter 13. Comparing Walter to the Biblical figure Job, Tristram describes his father’s habit of cursing his fate and wishing he were dead with an eloquence not unlike Socrates. Because of this, Mrs. Shandy is unable to distinguish Walter’s own speech from quotations from Socrates. When Walter quotes, from Socrates’s defense, that he has “three desolate children,” Mrs. Shandy bursts in and accuses him of having more children than she knows of. He angrily responds that he has one less and storms out.
Job is a Biblical character who, despite losing everything, never loses his faith in God, making Tristram’s comparison of Walter to Job humorous and ironic. Mrs. Shandy, not realizing Walter is quoting Socrates, thinks that he has kept a mistress on the side, with whom he has had another child. The misunderstanding goes entirely over the still-grieving Walter’s head.
Themes
Chapter 14. Toby explains to Mrs. Shandy that his brother was talking about Socrates’s children. Then he takes her hand and explains the situation.
Mrs. Shandy has not yet heard of Bobby’s death, leaving it to Toby to smooth things over and comfort her.
Themes
