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 29. Yorick describes the acrobatic tricks performed by Gymnast on his horse, including backflips while in the saddle. Tripet can perform similarly impressive tricks, but Toby and Trim are unmoved, having expected a story with real fighting. Walter, however, enjoys the story very much.
Yorick—or Tristram—plays up his joke even more, as this alleged polemic divine has absolutely nothing to do with religion, or is so esoteric a metaphor as to be completely illegible to the reader.
Themes
Chapter 30. Walter proposes to read from the Tristrapoedia. Toby lights his pipe, Yorick pulls his chair closer, and Trim snuffs out the candle as Walter begins to read.
Once again, Tristram has his characters read from another book within his own book, layering one narrative on top of the other.
Themes
Chapter 31. Walter skips the first 30 pages, which he finds too boring. The origin of society, Walter reads, is the family, specifically the relationship between man and woman, soon joined by a servant in the form of a bull. Yorick comments that it should be an ox. Walter continues, explaining that he is reading to show the origin of the father-son relationship, which is established by marriage, adoption, legitimation, or procreation. They argue over which of these is more important and return to the question of the mother’s claim on the child. Walter cites ancient sources, and Yorick retorts that one could cite the catechism too.
Walter’s reading of the Tristrapoedia mirrors Tristram’s narration of his own novel, jumping from topic to topic and digressing at will. Yorick’s comment about the ox is both a historical correction and a bawdy joke: oxen make much better plow animals than bulls, but the bull is also a symbol of sexuality. Walter’s and Yorick’s arguments prove that no matter how outlandish the argument, one can always find some kind of source to support one’s claims.
Themes
Chapter 32. Toby exclaims that Trim knows the catechism by heart. Walter is annoyed by the interruption, but Toby insists that Yorick ask Trim to read. Yorick politely asks Trim to recite the fifth commandment, but Trim doesn’t do it. Toby then orders Trim in a military manner, but Trim says he must begin with the first commandment, and then he mimes drill maneuvers. Toby shouts at Trim like a drill sergeant, and Trim says the commandments one by one. Then he honors his father and mother and steps back. Walter comments that while knowledge can be memorized, critical thought cannot, and he offers to donate Dinah’s fortune to charity if Trim can explain what he means by honoring his father and mother. Trim replies that he gave them three halfpence a day from his pay when they were old, and Yorick exclaims that he respects Trim more for doing this than he would if Trim had written the Talmud himself.
Trim’s deep religiosity is humorously interwoven with his soldier’s habits, as he must be commanded in order to recite the commandments. Far from displeasing Yorick, this delights him, as the unconventional parson loves finding religion in the least expected places and most interesting of disguises. Walter’s penchant for dense, theoretical thought is no match for Trim’s common sense either, at least in Yorick’s eyes. Unlike Walter, though Yorick enjoys reading and engaging with esoteric and philosophical arguments, he is ultimately most concerned with the practical consequences of those grand and lofty ideas.
Themes
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Chapter 33. Walter begins the next chapter on the subject of health. He and Yorick debate the roles of radical heat and radical moisture in the body, the tension between which is the source of all good and bad health. Walter has demonstrated this so conclusively, Tristram comments, that were a man on the moon to read it, he would despair for the lack of similar literary achievements on the moon.
Walter’s Tristrapoedia continues to resemble Tristram’s book in its wide-ranging interests: it is unclear how the medical theories of radical heat and radical moisture are relevant to Tristram’s education. Tristram, however, praises his father for precisely this lack of focus.
Themes
Chapter 34. Walter achieves this by attacking Hippocrates and Lord Verulam, decrying both doctors and medicine makers.
Walter’s critique is aimed against two leading authorities in medicine, the ancient Greek Hippocrates, often considered the founder of modern medicine, and Francis Bacon, the famous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English natural philosopher, also known by his noble title Lord Verulam.
Themes
Chapter 35. Lord Verulam believes that death is caused both by the internal spirit burning down and the external air drying out the body. This can therefore be solved by repairing the spirit with opiates and medically preserving the barrier between the body and the outside at the same time. Tristram then adds that to learn what Walter’s critique of this argument is, the reader will have to wait until the Tristrapoedia is published. In the meantime, they must trust that Walter invalidated Verulam’s theory and replaced it with his own.
Tristram adds the Tristrapoedia to his long list of future publications, which includes Yorick’s sermons and his father’s dissertation on Socrates. Tristram’s insistence that Walter has disproven Francis Bacon’s theory is of course ridiculous, but the reader has no choice but to trust him.
Themes
