Tobias Smollett’s first novel reflected both the reading interests of the day and Smollett’s own attitude toward fiction. As a picaresque with first-person narration, the novel offered readers an action-centered story with a rogue main character, but Roderick Random could hardly be termed the traditional picaro developed in a humorous vein.

Framed with images that reflected Smollett’s fixation on human filth, and caught up in incidents focused on violence and destruction, the novel’s actors appear as flat caricatures with names describing their personalities, such as Squire Gawky and Mr. Snarly; some represented vices, in the tradition of medieval and Renaissance drama.

Smollett’s fixation on decay and brutality grew from his own horrifying experiences as a surgeon’s mate on a British ship that saw action in an ill-fated 1741 expedition against Cartagena. An author who dealt with life’s disappointing experiences by shaping his real-life enemies into savage book characters, Smollett embraced the picaresque, showing his devotion by translating novels by Alain-René Lesage and Miguel de Cervantes.

He demonstrated his admiration by mentioning Gil Blas of Santillane and Don Quixote de la Mancha in Roderick Random’s preface. However, he took issue with Le Sage’s method of exciting “mirth” rather “than compassion,” and moving readers too quickly “from distress to happiness.” In Smollett’s opinion, that left the reader no time to pity the character “nor himself to be acquainted with affliction.” When translated and published in France in 1748, the anonymous work was attributed to Henry Fielding, causing Smollett to travel to Paris, where he corrected that impression.

The child of Scottish parents, Random has a miserable childhood. His father has been disinherited for making a poor marriage, and the family barely subsists. Before her son’s birth, Random’s mother dreams that “she was delivered of a tennis-ball.” Satan, serving as her midwife, takes a racket to the ball and strikes it “so forcibly” that it disappears from view. Her vision foreshadows the fact that Random will be propelled by a force beyond his control through many adventures.

Like Smollett himself, Random will experience bitter disappointment in life, and Smollett’s preface states that the novel will expose mankind’s “selfishness, envy, malice and base indifference.” His chapter titles, such as that of Chapter XXI, Volume I, make clear this attempt at exposure: “Squire Gawky comes to lodge with my master—is involved in a troublesome affair, out of which he is extricated by me—he marries my master’s daughter—they conspire against me—I am found guilty of theft—discharged—deserted by my friends—I hire a room in St. Gile’s—where by accident I find the lady to whom I made my addresses, in a miserable condition—I relieve her.”

The debilitating effects of poverty kill Random’s mother, and, unable to bear his grief, Random’s father deserts his son, leaving him with an embittered grandfather. Trapped in an unloving home, Random gains an education through the help of his uncle, Tom Bowling, a naval officer later forced out of the navy following a disagreement with his captain.

Although he loses touch with his uncle, Random secures a lifelong friendship with his devoted companion, Strap. Random travels with Strap to London and begins the series of adventures that mark the novel as rogue fiction; however, Random does not mete out the chicanery, but instead becomes its mark. He is denied happiness, even discovering his betrothed in bed with another man, and considers suicide several times, at one point climbing atop a chair to hang himself while in jail.

Other prisoners alert the authorities, and he receives “thirty stripes,” or lashes, as punishment. Because he lacks the appropriate bribe money, his attempt to enter the navy as a surgeon’s mate is foiled. Instead, he works as an assistant to a French apothecary, but is pressed into navy service after all. Finding himself tired of Strap’s company, Random encourages him to leave, then later bitterly regrets his shallow act.

Managing eventually to become a surgeon’s mate, he witnesses the carnage at Cartagena, is eventually shipwrecked, robbed, and stripped on the shore by a gang of marauders, then taken on as a footman by a woman poet. He falls in love with her niece, Narcissa, who has wealthier suitors that her family finds more suitable.

Many more harrowing adventures follow, including Random’s kidnapping to France, but there he reunites with his uncle, Tom Bowling. After fighting in the French army, he meets up with Strap, who has transformed himself through good fortunes into Monsieur d’Estrapes. With the help of his old friend, Random scores his own financial success and courts an heiress after he and Strap return to London.

His efforts prove unsuccessful, and he meets up at Bath with Narcissa, but again fails to win her hand. A disagreement with Narcissa’s brother drives Random back to London. Distraught over his lack of love and fulfillment, he gambles away his funds and ends up in debtor’s prison. Once again, Tom Bowling appears and gains Random’s release from prison and his entrance into the navy.

On the next adventure, Random travels to South America and meets a mysterious trader, Don Roderigo. In the picaresque tradition of disguise and questionable identity, Don Roderigo turns out to be Random’s long-lost father. The two men return to Scotland, procure the family’s property, and Random marries Narcissa, while Strap marries her servant.

Smollett wrote in a 1747 letter to Alexander Carlyle that the novel is a satire, and he used the book to lambaste all individuals who had ever caused him harm, including those who rejected a play he tried for years to publish in London. Smollett also hoped to correct negative English attitudes toward Scots, growing from England’s imperialism regarding Scotland. Smollett himself felt he had suffered for those attitudes.

The positive presentation of Random in the face of continuous harsh treatment is a part of Smollett’s revisionist efforts. Mrs. Random’s dream also supports the positive view of Scotland, as it concludes with the tennis ball’s return to the land of its birth, where it “immediately sprung up a goodly tree covered with blossoms, the scent of which operated so strongly on her nerves that she awoke.” While critics have wondered over the value of this particular novel in the picaresque tradition, Smollett played a crucial role in the extension of realism into novels, and influenced the later modified picaresque works by Charles Dickens.

Bibliography
Lutz, Alfred. “Representing Scotland in Roderick Random and Humphry Clinker: Smollett’s Development as a Novelist.” Studies in the Novel 33.1 (Spring 2001): 1–18.
Phelps, Gilbert. “Tobias Smollett: The Adventures of Roderick Random.” An Introduction to Fifty British Novels: 1600–1900. London: Pan Books, 1979, 89–95.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 18th century British literature, 18th-century satire, Alain-René Le Sage, Analysis of Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random, bildungsroman elements, British novel history, Cartagena expedition in literature, Cervantes influence, character caricature, depictions of poverty in literature, Don Quixote influence, early english novels, fictional autobiographies, Gil Blas influence, Henry Fielding confusion, influence on Charles Dickens, literary depictions of brutality, literary depictions of suffering, literary realism, literary representations of Scotland, literary violence, maritime fiction, Narcissa in Roderick Random, naval surgeon fiction, picaresque novel, picaresque tradition, Roderick Random, Roderick Random analysis, rogue fiction, satire in literature, scottish identity in literature, Smollett and imperialism, Smollett and nationalism, Smollett's satire, Smollett’s literary style, Strap character in fiction, Tobias Smollett, Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random, Tom Bowling character