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Chapter 28
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Vicar of Wakefield, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humility in the Face of Adversity
The Possibility of Redemption
Family and Society
Equality, Justice, and the Law
Travel, Home, and Belonging
Summary
Analysis
In Dr. Primrose’s sermon, he reflects on suffering and hope in the world and why suffering is necessary. He deems attempts to answer this question through philosophy insufficient and often contradictory, either focusing on the pleasures or miseries of life. Religion, by contrast, explains suffering as mental preparation for the word to come. Whether one is happy or unhappy, religion gives them something to look forward to. Religion gives particular comfort, Dr. Primrose argues, to those who suffer most. Dr. Primrose sees the happiness of heaven after a hard life on earth as proof that religion is a greater advantage to the poor than the rich, balancing out the rich’s greater enjoyment of worldly pleasures. Looking around at the prison’s dismal surroundings, he encourages all the prisoners to look forward to death and prepare themselves for the happier life to come.
In his speech, Dr. Primrose addresses a number of philosophical arguments about the meaning of life and the necessity of suffering, rebutting them in favor of a religious explanation. Through this moving speech, Goldsmith clarifies for the reader just what the moral goodness of such an utterly unworldly man such as Dr. Primrose consists of. Dr. Primrose, holding fast to a religious notion of goodness that does not exist in the corrupt world, is willing to suffer all manner of humiliations, knowing that it is for the afterlife that his conduct matters. This is not only a personal philosophy, however, but also an answering to the suffering of all the downtrodden.
Themes
Literary Devices
