“On the fifth day of November… was I Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought fourth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours” (9). This reference to the fifth of November serves to further describe the complexities of Tristram Shandy’s life. His inclusion of this reference into the text is a good reminder that Tristram truly believes he was destined to live a life full of incongruities. As explained in the notes toward the back of the book, the fifth of November held double significance at the time this novel was written and published; one being the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’s failed gunpowder plot in 1605 and the other being the anniversary of the landing of prince William III on route to claim the British and Irish crowns in 1688. Both of these events hold very controversial significance in British politics.

Guy Fawkes was a citizen of Catholic Spain who fought in the Eighty Years’ War against Protestant forces. In 1688 he partook in a plot to place a Catholic monarch on the British throne by killing King James I, but his plans were spoiled when the authorities were informed of the plot. The fifth of November began with his capture, which was followed by his torture, confession, and eventually his sentence to death. King William III served as king of England and fought against Louis XIV, a Catholic king of France, alongside Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Both of these individuals fought for what they believed to be the best faith but were each on completely opposing sides of the battles, one pro-Protestant and the other anti-Protestant, one loved by the people of England and the other hated.

These two individuals, and their ties to the fifth of November, are a good metaphor for the incongruities of Tristram Shandy’s life story. On one hand, we have a revolutionary who fought against powers larger than himself, and on the other we have a leader who fought to protect his land and his people. By using the fifth of November as the date of Tristram Shandy’s birth, we are being prepared for the increasingly incongruous story of his life. This life, which he makes sure to remind us will be far from normal, begins on a date that is itself far from normal. The fact that he shares his birthday with the anniversaries of two such controversial events serves to further validate his theory that the complexities of his life had been determined before his birth.

Learning of the significance that the date of his birth holds ushers us as readers to begin to believe his theory that the bizarre and obscure events that he is forced to life through are an unavoidable part of his fate. If the reader is aware of these two references, which early readers of the novel surely were, it becomes easier to believe the otherwise unbelievable occurrences that surround his birth. The reader may now more easily suspend their disbelief in what is happening, accepting the ironic comedy that the novel exhibits. Upon shift in mindset by the reader, we find it plausible, at least with respects to this fictional novel, that the incongruities that occurred during his conception truly did rattle his “animal spirits”.