V explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Time and Mortality

  Tristram reflects on the passage of time from his birth to his present asthmatic state, emphasizing the relentless progression of life and its afflictions.

• The Absurdity of Systems

  Tristram's wish to have been born on another planet and his critique of the world's unfairness highlight the absurdity of cosmic and social systems that govern fortune.

Characters to notice

• Tristram Shandy

  Narrator and protagonist, born on November 5, 1718, reflecting on his lifelong misfortunes.

Key passages

• “On the fifth day of November , 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as near nine calendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,⁠—was I Tristram Shandy , Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disasterous world of ours.”

  Tristram Shandy was born on November 5, 1718, almost exactly nine months after his conception, entering a miserable and calamitous world.

  Tristram announces his birth with characteristic irony, linking it to the timing of his parents' marital relations.

• “I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil;⁠⸺⁠yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.”

  Fortune has constantly toyed with Tristram, not through great evils but through a relentless series of petty misfortunes and accidents that have plagued him at every stage of life.

  Tristram personifies Fortune as a duchess who has harassed him with trivial but persistent bad luck.