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Book 2, Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Joseph Andrews, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hypocrisy
Lust vs. Chastity
Social Class
Religion and Charity
Summary
Analysis
After the lady finishes telling her story about Leonora, Joseph Andrews looks out the window and is shocked to see that although Abraham Adams planned to take his horse from the inn, the absent-minded clergyman is walking instead. As he walks, the distracted Adams gets off-track without realizing it. He stops to read a book of the Greek playwright Aeschylus for a while when suddenly he hears a gunshot from a gentleman hunting partridges. The hunter judges correctly that Adams isn’t where he belongs. He complains to Adams that there’s little wild game in the area because soldiers staying in a nearby neighborhood have shot it all. Adams likes the hunter and wants to talk to him.
Abraham Adams is supposed to be the spiritual guide for the people of his parish, so it’s humorous that he can’t even guide himself along the right road. The Aeschylus book that Adams always carries is one of his most important possessions. Although it shows his devotion to reading the classics, it also hints at the limits of Adams’s knowledge, since Adams seems to be so devoted to Aeschylus that he doesn’t read much else.
Themes
Literary Devices
