Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne is an eighteenth-century novel that is considered a classic of English literature. It is a unique work, incorporating elements of satire, philosophy, and parody. Written in a highly digressive style, it gives off a feeling of improvisational, playful storytelling more than that of a structured and organized narrative.
The full title of the novel is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The main protagonist is the eponymous Tristram, who begins by attempting to narrate the story of his own life, starting from his conception. However, the novels follows a form of stream of consciousness, so that Tristram often digresses onto tangential topics, only to come back to the original line of thought at some later point. Along the way, Tristram gives all sorts of descriptions of people and places, many of which don't have any direct relevance to the plot.
The first part of the novel is filtered through the point of view of Tristram's father, Walter Shandy, a reckless optimist and humorist. As the novel progresses, we get to see how Tristram is shaped by his father's personality, despite the fact that Walter is more of a distant figure than one of a close confidante. Walter's comedic misadventures in childrearing are often juxtaposed with the mixture of bemusement and ridiculousness that comes from his attempts to impact Tristram's behavior, even before Tristram is born.
The second part of the novel focuses more on Tristram himself, and follows him as he travels around Europe, encountering a variety of characters along the way. Here, the comedic element is pushed even further as Tristram finds himself in all sorts of bumbling and comical situations, using his sardonic wit to make light of whatever predicament he finds himself in.
One of the book's most important themes is its opposition to the intellectual movement known as Rationalism, which held that the only reliable guide to knowledge and truth was one's own ability to reason. Sterne uses the meandering plots and subplots of the novel to counter this idea, and shows how the "logic" of a person's life is often the result of happenstance and the randomness of life rather than ordered thought or received wisdom.
Throughout the novel, Sterne uses tragi-comedy to great effect, often combining humor and sorrow in order to sharpen both the satire and the larger philosophical questions that are asked. This mixture of lightheartedness and gravity is also to be found in themes of death, with characters often reading or meditating on life's mortality and the trifling nature of the concerns that accompany it.
Tristram Shandy is an indelible part of literature, combining irreverent comedy with tragedy and philosophy. At times it is a farce and at other times a meditation on philosophical questions. But at its heart, it is a complex, entertaining, and thought-provoking novel of human life, told with a keen eye for laughs and tears.
