The term “identity” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “blah blah blah”. This concept can be seen as personal and individual to oneself and stands out as a generic term for attributes such as; consciousness, heritage, name, appearance and soul. Since Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy draws influence from John Locke's An Essay of Human Understanding, in which Locke discusses the origin of personal identity, individual identity is evidently reflected in the text. The novel demonstrates Sterne's interpretation of personal identity through the construction of each of his unique characterizations. Tristram Shandy discusses the concept and origin of the identity of selfhood by reflecting on and opposing Locke's theory, and therefore should be considered more substantial than a simple "cocks and bulls story". While Tristram fictitiously titles his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, the novel itself includes much minor details of the protagonist's remembered life and instead focuses more on events involving the novel's secondary characters and surrounding his early childhood instead . These, however, allow Sterne to identify the early developments of Tristram's individual identity through hereditary and social influences on his personality. The protagonist begins his novel by presenting the idea that it was his parents' actions, while he was forming as a homunculus, that became the decisive influence on his unfortunate existence. “I wish either my father or my mother, or even both, for they were both equally obligated to it, had cared what they were doing when they begot me […] if they had duly weighed and considered all this […] ] I am truly convinced that I am...... middle of paper ......: he signed his letters as Tristram, he published his sermons as Yorick, […] “Shandy[ing] it away” in what Thomas Keymer calls it "a highly visible form of artistic performance, through which Sterne's social existence could become an extension of his fictional text." (Fawcett, 2012) Similar to Tristram Shandy, Sterne used his characterizations, or “secondary characters,” to project his personal identity onto society. The two characterizations mirror Sterne's professions as both a novelist and a clergyman, and Tristram Shandy can therefore be identified as projecting elements of Sterne's identity. There is also uniqueness in his form of writing, as his "cock and bull story" presents a key shift in the craft of novel writing, and is often regarded as "the progenitor of the twentieth-century stream-of-consciousness novel". (Day, Keegan, 2009, pg5) Sterne is unique