Analysis of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Novel - Essay Example

Book Review I d believe that ‘Time is the bane of the Shandy household in the novel The Life and Opinions of TristramShandy, Gentleman. In the Novel, we find Tristam always racing against time in whatever he does. He tries his best to write as fast as he can in his work but he always is not fast enough to keep up with his life (Allibone, 13). Life only moves forward and it is hard for someone to recover lost time. However, this cannot be said of writing. In writing one can move forwards and backwards in time in their writing hence they can create time where it never existed before (Kalinkin, 5). Writing is never up-to-the-moment, hence allows one to narrate events in their own time setting. Hence with such an opportunity for Tristram to play around with time, he takes full advantage in his writing to play around with time (Kalinkin, 7). However, this does not mean that his life is fulfilled since he will always be living under his career in writing and may never get to experience time management and the real vale hat people attach to time (Allibone, 23). Time is also seen as the evil part in the Shandy household as we are told in the beginning of how Tristam’s conception went wrong. This happened as the result of Mr. Shandy getting interrupted by Mrs. Shandy at the time of ejaculation. If anything, just from this incident the reader gets to realise how time was of the essence in this novel (Allibone, 31). Placing such a scenario at the beginning of the novel that would go on to affect the rest of the plot shows just how crucial time was. Every event was linked to its own exact time. For everything to go well, the right thing had to done at the right time (Kalinkin, 10). In reference to the literary technique used in the novel, we find that the author defiantly refuses to place events in proper chronological order. At one point it is like time is moving backwards and forwards (Kalinkin, 12). Time seems to be moving backwards at one time especially as we learn of the beginning of Tristam’s conception at the beginning of the novel; while at the ending of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman seems to be ending before Tristam is born. This is very strange (Allibone, 45). The thee of time is very well highlighted in this novel. If anything he author must have been obsessed with time and how it affects even the littlest of details in our lives. First of all we learn that implantation of Tristam in his mother’s womb was disturbed. Why was this? (Kalinkin, 15)Simply because Mrs. Shandy interrupted Mr. Shandy at the moment he was to ejaculate. This couple must have been really being obsessed with plotting events in a ‘timely’ manner (Laurence, 30). To support my claim on this couple’s obsession with time, we hear of Mrs Shandy, at the time of procreation, asking his husband if he had remembered to wind the clock (Allibone, 37). This event is followed by annoyance and distraction from other things that mattered and all these had the effect of creating an imbalance in the delivery of a well-conceived child (Kalinkin, 15). Time is handled by the author as both psychological and chronological. The reader takes some time to read the novel but thereafter there is the impression of ‘how much time has really elapsed in the part that it have just read?’ there is the time that events are allocated, and also time used as an organisational device (Allibone, 57). The way the writer decides to handle time is different form he way time flies. Tristram Shandy opens in 1718 and ends in 1713 and ranges from Henry VIIIs time to 1766. Mrs. Shandys labour begins in Volume I (Laurence, 51), but Tristram is not born until Volume III (xxiii, 163); thus, though Tristram is an eight-month baby, it takes him a year to be born, since that is the amount of time that elapsed between the publication of Volume II and Volume III (Kalinkin, 17). Time is also used a structural device where flashbacks and flash-forward are applied to explain events. There is an event referred t in the future tense. Tristam refers to an event which has not yet happened: "a cow broke in (tomorrow morning) to my uncle Tobys fortifications" (Laurence, 187). It seems that such events, not chronological represented, are a form of digression. However, they help further the story and are very relevant. "In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too–and at the same time.... (Kalinkin, 20) I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going..." (Laurence, 58) (Laurence, 20). Suspended time is also experienced as the reader goes through this story. The flashbacks and digressions the author uses are imposed onto the character’s time to provide additional information (Allibone, 88). In Volume I, Uncle Tobys reply to his brother is interrupted: "I think, replied my uncle Toby, taking his pipe from his mouth, and striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left thumb, as he began his sentence,–I think, says he" (Laurence, 51) (Kalinkin, 15). Two pages later, Tristram returns to Toby without any time having passed in Tobys world, "But I forget my uncle Toby, whom all this while we have left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco pipe" (Laurence, 53). In Volume II, time is briefly reversed, and the reader is returned to my fathers question, "What can they be doing, brother?" Only then does the reader learn what Toby has to say, and what he has to say, after all this delay, is not an explanation or a theory about the noise but the pedestrian suggestion that they ask a servant (vi, 80) (Kalinkin, 13). The reader’s time and the character’s time is the other style the author uses in this novel. The time since uncle Toby rang the bell and Obadiah left for Dr. Slop is 90 minutes, and this Tristam takes into consideration by saying that no one can say, with reason, that I have not allowed Obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come" (Laurence, 83) (Kalinkin, 21). Here, her author handles two kinds of time; there is the time that the reader is literary using and is measurable by a clock and there is the fictional time that is rooted in the reader’s mind as to how much time has elapsed in the character’s lives as portrayed in the story. In the story, the time taken by the characters to go through an event would be more that the ninety minutes the reader has used to narrate the event (Kalinkin, 14). Tristram goes onto acknowledge that no real or chronological time may have elapsed: "though, morally and truly speaking, the man, perhaps, has scarce had time to get on his boots." He then addresses a literal-minded reader, whose objections he sets forth, in order to demolish their irrelevance to fictional time (Allibone, 65). Tristram refers to the time in which he is writing the novel, placing us in the room where he is writing, telling us about the weather as he writes, describing his activities or what he is wearing as he writes. A particular thought which he has just written down came to him "this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and between the hours of nine and ten in the morning" (Laurence, 53). The year is, of course, the actual time when Sterne was writing this volume. Or, the narrator tells us, "And here am I sitting, this 12th day of August, 1766, in a purple jerkin and yellow pair of slippers, without either wig or cap on, a most tragicomically completion of his prediction, ‘That I should neither think, nor act like any other mans child, upon that very account" (Laurence, 486). Such intrusions of the narrators (and Sternes?) time calls attention to the artificiality of the novel and the functionality of his characters, which yet are convincingly alive for the reader. They also raise the question of the relationship of the actual writer (not the fictional persona) to his novel (Kalinkin, 19). My father looks at his watch, announces that two hours and ten minutes have passed, "but to my imagination it seems almost an age" (Laurence, 149). The distinction is between chronological, measurable time whose units never change (a minute is never more nor less than 60 seconds) and time as experienced by human beings (it seems to pass slowly or to pass quickly, its duration changing according to circumstances) (Kalinkin, 22). Of course, Walter is not interested in clarifying the issue for uncle Toby, but merely to have his ear so that he can expound his theory of time (introducing thereby the theme of communication or, it would be more accurate to say, the lack of communication). To his astonishment and the readers amusement, Toby knows the reason, "‘Tis owing, entirely, quoth my uncle Toby, to the succession of our ideas" (Laurence, 149). A further twist to the comedy is Tobys admission that he does not at all understand what he just said; his brother responds, "there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother Toby–‘there almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.–But Ill tell thee" (Laurence, 150). Walter is on his hobby horse and so cannot stop; he goes on to expound the theory of duration of time, which in this case is a valid contemporary theory. Toby cries out, "You puzzle me to death" (Laurence, 151). In this passage about time, Sterne presents simultaneously the brothers lack of communication on the level of language but their loving communication at the level of emotional empathy and response (Kalinkin, 14). The digressive-progressive technique presents problems to the narrator in telling the story of his life and propounding his opinions (the full title is, after all, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy) (Allibone, 100). In following the associations that cross his mind, providing background, and giving his opinions and his fathers opinions, the narrator is accumulating material faster than he can write about it: I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of the fourth volume–and no farther than to my first days day–‘tis demonstrative that I have three hundred and sixty-four more days to write just now, than when I first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been doing at it–on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes back–was every day of my life to be as busy as this–And why not? (Laurence, 200). And the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description–And for what reason should they are cut short? at this rate I should just live 364 times faster than I should write–It must follow, an please your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to write–and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have to read (Laurence, 228). He laments, "I shall never overtake myself." Another issue that this passage raises is what the writer should include in his novel and how the content of the novel may be affected by the passage of time in the novelists life while writing the novel (Kalinkin, 16). The relationship of writing and time takes a different twist with the Tristapaedia that Walter is writing to provide a guide in raising Tristram; he hopes to overcome the crippling disadvantages of Tristrams unfortunate conception, his flattened nose, and his ill-omened name (Allibone, 113). As Walter writes, he discovers more and more that has to be said, so that the work gets longer and longer. After three years, he has written only half the Tristapaedia (Laurence, 140). The consequence is that Tristram himself "was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother; and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,–every day a page or two became of no consequence" (Laurence, 300). Walter, on his hobby horse again, loses sight of his purpose; even worse, instead of contributing to Tristrams education, he is relegating it to a woman whose understanding he holds in contempt. In addition, this is an example of a cause with ridiculous, unexpected consequences (Laurence, 150). As much as time is regarded as bane of the Shandy household in the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, we see time being used as a lieterary form that helps shape the story and the author’s mode of delivery (Femi, 41). It is used to give detailed accounts of events, for example, in Book 3; Tristram is… still being born. Hang up your hats, because this is going to take a while. Book 3 is the catastrophic volume (Allibone, 133). Not only is Mrs. Shandy screaming upstairs while she labours, but Mr. Shandy contorts himself trying to extract his handkerchief from his pocket; Dr. Slop cuts his thumb trying to untie the knots of his doctors bag; Susannah scrapes her arm; the midwife bangs her hip in a fall; Dr. Slop scrapes Tobys hand demonstrating the forceps; and—oops—Dr. Slop breaks baby Tristrams nose in the delivery (Femi, 54). Book 6 begins with the fallout from Tristrams circumcision. Hes crying in pain while everyone argues about what to do, and the whole neighbourhood thinks that his entire penis has been lopped off (Laurence, 250). Mr. Shandy decides Tristram has been spending too much time with women and resolves to make a man out of him. Toby tells a long, sad, and possibly pointless story about a man named Le Fever. Then, just when things have taken a turn to the Tristram, our narrator announces that hes going to turn his attention to Toby and Tobys love affair (Allibone, 123). In Book 8, Tristram takes us back more than a decade before he was born, when Toby first came to Shandy Hall. He stayed for a few days with the Widow Wadman, who promptly fell in love with him (Femi, 61). He, meanwhile, ignored her for eleven years. Finally she carried out a subtle ploy: she asked him to look in her eye for a piece of dirt, and he fell for her. Not that Tristram tells the story in anything like that order—he starts with a digression, interrupts for Trims story about the King of Bohemia, and then again for Trims naughty story about being seduced by a nun (Laurence, 189). Humour plays a role in this novel but has not been given much attention. In Tristram Shandy, everyone—including Tristram—is one step away from joining the Mad Hatters tea party (Femi, 121). Serious subjects are always one step away from being the subject of ridicule, and Tristram ridicules just about everything. But hes not unkind. Foolishness is a prerogative of being human (Laurence, 300). Its one of the things that everyone, from servant to master, has in common. Everyone has a subject theyre foolish about, and foolishness let people laugh. Mirth, according to Yorick and one of the novels epigraphs, is one of the main reasons to get out of bed in the morning. If you cant make or take a joke, youre not much good as a person (Femi, 81). Tristam Shandy takes a backseat in almost every role due to dim in the novel. He is a character that gets interested in people’s dirty ‘secret’ lives. In short, this character is a sly trickster (Femi, 101). He is practically absent in all, events and rarely sys anything directly. This is evidenced much more clearly in the event that he does not even say anything directly after he is accidentally circumcised (Laurence, 149). We can see Tristam as a narrator as evidenced by his being clever, well-educated, good-humoured, easily distracted, a little mournful, a little silly, and a lot sentimental. Take this example (Femi, 81): In less than five minutes I shall have thrown my pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick ink which is left remaining at the bottom of my inkhorn, after it—I have but half a score things to do in the time—I have a thing to name—a thing to lament—a thing to hope—a thing to promise—and a thing to threaten … This chapter, therefore, I name the chapter of THINGS—and my next chapter to it, that is, the first chapter of my next volume, if I live, shall be my chapter upon WHISKERS, in order to keep up some sort of connection in my works (4.32.1) References Allibone Austin Samuel. New Themes Condemned: Or, Thirty Opinions upon "New Themes" and Its "Reviewer" with Answers to 1. "Some Notice of A Review by a Layman. 2. Hints to a Layman. 3. Charity and the Clergy." Lippincott, Grambo: United States, 1853. Web. Kalinkin, Volodymyr. Sterne`s writing and conversational style - a co-operative work between the author and the reader. GRIN Verlag: Germany, 2008. Print. Femi Oyebode. Mindreadings: Literature and Psychiatry. RCPsych Publications: United Kingdom, 2009. Print. Laurence Sterne. The Works of Laurence Sterne: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman. Proprietors: United States, 1790. Print. Read More