Since this is my first blog, I’d like to share what I think are the highlights of my reading of Proust’s “Combray”. I’d like to focus on two broad aspects of my reading of the story: the writing style and the central theme of the novel.
\nFirst of all, it is obvious that the story is telling from the perspective of the narrator, “I”, who sees, hears, thinks, and feels, and focuses on the real social life and human situation. It is because the story is told in the first-person perspective and describes the senses pretty much in details, it makes the readers more immersed in the plot; the readers can also feel the author’s self-seeking, self-reflection and inner experience from the author’s self-narrative, and giving more space to think, although it is often puzzling! It is also worth noting that the story timeline does not adhere to a clear linear narrative, but rather is intricate. This means that there is no central character, no complete story, only plot threads that run throughout the work. The story is generally centered on the narrator’s life experiences and inner activities, through which a large number of characters are depicted, such as mom, dad, aunt, grandparents, etc. I would like to compare this style of writing to a large tree with intertwined branches, the trunk of which can be extended in any direction. Of course, it’s also because of the disorganized storyline that it can somewhat increase the difficulty for the readers to interpret the story as a whole, as the readers need to piece together a seemingly complete story from the tiny fragments of the story. Secondly, Proust intentionally accentuates the narrator’s half-asleep, half-awake mental state.\u00a0However, I personally feel that this can also be combined with the intermittent memory fragments, symbolizing the turbid and impenetrable nature of life. Proust also uses these fragmented memories to expose the complexity of social conflicts and human relationships, as well as to reflect deeply on the vicissitudes of the world and on life and death.<\/p>\n
Question for discussion:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n “Thus I would often lie until morning thinking back to the time at Combray, to my sad sleepless evenings, to the many days, too, whose image had been restored to me more recently by the taste-what they would have called at Combray the “fragrance”-of a cup of tea, and, by an association of memories, to what, many years after leaving that little town\u2026”(Proust, 190)<\/p>\n Proust’s “Combray” specializes in sleepy memories. For instance, goodnight kisses from mom, little Madeleine cake from aunt, etc. pull the narrator into memories over and over again.\u00a0I’m curious what memories symbolize to you? If you had to describe your memories in terms of an object, scent, or anything, what do you think it would be? and why?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since this is my first blog, I’d like to share what I think are the highlights of my reading of Proust’s “Combray”. I’d like to focus on two broad aspects of my reading of the story: the writing style and the central theme of the novel. First of all, it is obvious that the story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96386,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,8,6,10,9],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-proust","tag-childhood","tag-experience","tag-memory","tag-proust","tag-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ccrmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}