The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“[H]ave not the wisest men in all ages […] had their HOBBY-HORSES […]?—and so long as a man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?”

Tristram establishes the motif of the hobbyhorse as one of the main drivers of both his narrative and human behavior. He argues that not only does everyone have their personal preoccupations that drive their behavior, but they also ought to be viewed with tolerance and humor. This quote demonstrates the importance of both Association, Digression, and the Nature of Memory and Sympathy and Benevolence to the novel. Association is the main way human minds work, and given that, people’s quirks should be met with sympathy.

“But, of all the names in the universe, he had the most unconquerable aversion for TRISTRAM.”

As the narrator, Tristram takes great pains to convey his bad fortune. Life has conspired against him, he insists, and one example is the fact that his father gave him the name he found most contemptible. This is Tristram’s fate, to be caught up in the absurdity of his family members. To explain his bad fortune, he must explain his father. To explain his father, he must explain the unlikely circumstances that engendered Walter with this theory of nominative determinism. Tristram’s bad luck is such that his life story demands constant digressions so that he can never truly tell his story without telling everything else.