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 6. Around the same time as the siege of Dendermond, Toby is eating dinner as Trim sits nearby. In consideration of Trim’s wounded knee, Toby always insists that Trim sit while serving him dinner while Trim insists on standing, causing constant arguments between them. The landlord of the village inn comes in asking for a glass of sack for another officer who is very sick in his inn; the officer will only eat toast and drink sack. Toby commends the landlord for helping the sick man and gives him several bottles. After he leaves, Toby sends Trim to ask the landlord for the officer’s name. The landlord cannot remember but will ask the officer’s son, who is staying with him and caring for him.
The siege of Dendermond took place in 1706, meaning this incident took place 12 years before Tristram’s birth and not long after Toby and Trim moved to Shandy-Hall. Toby and Trim’s bickering reveals both the depth of their loyalty to each other and their shared inability to properly play the roles of master and servant. Sack is a type of fortified wine from Spain or the Canary Islands popular in England.
Themes
After he has heard the story, Toby wishes to go visit the sick officer, but he cannot leave the house due to the wound to his groin. He sends Trim instead and waits, smoking his pipe. Tristram comments that had Toby’s thoughts not wandered to the question of whether certain kinds of fortifications should be built at an angle or in a straight line, he would have thought only of the officer and the officer’s son.
Toby is still recovering from his wound, having not yet regained full mobility. Likewise, questions of fortifications are still fresh in Toby’s mind, the “perplexities” of it all distracting him from other matters. Tristram’s mention of straight lines is, of course, also an allusion to his own digressive narrative structure.
Themes
Chapter 7. Toby smokes three full pipes of tobacco before Trim returns and gives him his report. Trim arrived at the inn and asked for the sick officer’s servant but learned from the landlady that he does not have one. The officer, who was on the way to join his regiment, arrived on a rented horse but was too sick to continue, and now he seems unlikely to recover. As the landlady was explaining this, the officer’s son entered to prepare the toast, but Trim insisted on doing it for him. This gesture of kindness caused the boy to burst into tears, and Trim also started to cry. Trim explained that Toby had sent him and offered to provide any other help he could. Yorick’s curate was in the inn too, but he did not comfort the boy, much to Trim’s frustration.
Smoking tobacco by pipe is a slow process, usually taking around 45 minutes, indicating that Trim has been gone for quite some time. Le Fever’s circumstances and biography were not uncommon, as the large and diverse British army included many poor officers and soldiers among its ranks. Le Fever had been called up to join his regiment, or unit, and was traveling to it on his own expense. Yorick’s curate, who incorrectly christened Tristram, once again shows himself to be less than qualified to minister to the local population.
Themes
Trim is asked to come upstairs after the officer and his son have said their prayers; the curate is surprised, having thought soldiers never prayed. The landlady explained that the officer is devout, and Trim added that soldiers pray when they can, and less hypocritically than priests. Toby scolds Trim for that comment before asking him to continue the story. Trim went upstairs and met the officer, who explained that he served with Toby at Flanders but they were never introduced. Toby and Trim both remember Le Fever, whose wife was shot in his tent, and Trim pours Toby a glass of sack, and Toby asks what will become of Le Fever’s son.
Trim’s anger toward the curate expresses common sentiments in the eighteenth century that the clergy were corrupt and failing to live by their own rules, a criticism also frequently wielded within the church. Toby scolds Trim not for speaking out of turn, but for violating one of the commandments: thou shalt not judge. By strange coincidence, this is not the first time Le Fever’s path has crossed Toby and Trim’s, as they all served in battle in Flanders in years previous, either in the Nine Years’ War or the War of Spanish Succession.
Themes
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Chapter 8. Though Toby is busy carrying out a model version of the siege of Dendermond, he gives up his hobby-horse to attend to Le Fever and Le Fever’s son. Toby criticizes Trim for not offering Le Fever money, though he concedes that Trim had no orders to do so. Toby commands Trim to bring Le Fever to his home to recover. Trim is skeptical, and they argue over whether or not Le Fever will recover, and Toby swears to God that Le Fever will not die. Tristram suggests that because Toby’s oath was made with such good intentions, heaven chose not to record it as a sin.
As Tristram has already mentioned briefly and will describe in more detail later, Toby’s sieges have reached such a complex stage that they now mimic the actual sieges taking place in Flanders. Toby cannot bring himself to criticize Trim too harshly for once again as Trim’s commander he bears responsibility. Toby’s insistence that Le Fever will not die foreshadows what the reader already knows: that Le Fever will indeed die. Tristram then somewhat blasphemously claims that in the rare instances when Toby curses, he does so out of such genuine feeling that it does not count as sin.
Themes
Chapter 9. Toby puts his purse into his pocket, orders Trim to go fetch a doctor in the morning, and goes to bed.
Toby readies himself to visit Le Fever the next day, putting his purse in his pocket to make sure that he will not forget it.
Themes
Chapter 10. Toby gets up early to visit Le Fever, entering his room and sitting down next to the bed. He asks Le Fever how he feels and then explains that he wishes to bring him to his house to recover. Le Fever’s son is deeply moved by Toby’s kindness, but it is too late: Le Fever is already dying, and he soon passes away.
Toby’s kindness and genuine feeling, for both Le Fever and Le Fever’s son, while powerful, is not enough to heal the dying soldier.
Themes
