In these chapters, we are introduced to Walter's theory of noses, and we begin to learn why noses are so important to him. Thus, when Tristram's second accident occurs — his smashed nose — we have the perspective against which to measure its importance. Noses also furnish him with the opportunity to tease the reader about the latter's salaciousness; although Tristram constantly denies that he has ulterior motives in talking about noses, if the reader insists that Tristram has, then the responsibility for the sexual interpretation is the reader's. Tristram believes that he is revealing us to ourselves.
One of the most successful elements in the book is the feeling it imparts to us that the writer is talking about a real family, the sense of involvement that the writer has with these people. It establishes Tristram as an individual apart from Sterne; the tribute to Uncle Toby in Chapter 34, the love of the nephew for his generous, warm-hearted uncle, is moving and it is appropriate to the "I" who is always before us. We may remind ourselves again that Sterne had no Uncle Toby, and although some commentators have found clues to Toby's character in Sterne's father, that is really beside the point.
The many references to the "learned men" who wrote about noses — some of them real writers and real texts — make another sizable block of learned jargon at which Tristram pokes fun. It is all meat and drink to Walter Shandy, but Tristram keeps his sense of proportion and understates his amusement at his father's obsession. In Walter's "research" into the meaning of Erasmus' dialogue — his literally scratching the letters with a knife to change their shape (and consequently the meaning of the words) — we see another proof of his lack of proportion about his "theories"; it seems that he will do anything to make his point. Toby, who knows nothing about abstract reasoning, looks at everything with the clear sight of an innocent child; he knows only that in order to prove his point, Walter has changed a word.
