The Adventures of Roderick Random

About the book

Roderick Random leaves an insecure early life in Scotland to seek opportunities that repeatedly prove less dependable than they first appear. His education and medical knowledge take him through employment, travel, naval service, and encounters with people whose assistance often carries an unspoken cost. Smollett gives the first-person narrative a restless succession of reversals, allowing chance and social power to interrupt the hero's plans. The loyalty of Strap provides a continuing personal connection amid unstable circumstances. Satire emerges from practical details of work, status, money, and bodily discomfort rather than from a detached survey of manners. Roderick's own conduct remains part of that examination, making the story an adventure in which survival and ambition do not always leave room for an uncomplicated claim to virtue.

• Social ambition
• Precarious work
• Friendship

Why read it

For an energetic picaresque narrative whose medical and naval experiences give its social satire a rough physical immediacy.

English text