I’ll be honest, when I first cracked open this book, I did not expect the start it presented me with. Perhaps I should have known from years of experience not to expect the book to immediately explain the title the author has given it however, this may be the first book that really drove home the point of a story not being really connected to the title it bears. At least, on the surface. Aragon lends the reader insight into Paris in the 1920s through the eyes of the protagonist, a Parisian who observes most if not all manner of social interactions, the existence of institutions and places and the little daily occurrences of the world. As a reader, I am gratified that Aragon’s use of descriptive and, to some degree, evocative language allows me to see the city of Paris as the protagonist does, to see the Passage de L’Opera as it must have been in the earlier 20th century.

As a someone who likes to write herself, I feel there is a certain ambiguity to the pictures we are presented by the author which seems to be done almost deliberately in an attempt to enhance the reader’s experience of being intrigued by the novel. I find that I am more confused over this novel than I was with Proust’s however, especially over the use of images in between texts which seemed to cause a sort of abrupt break to the flow of the novel. I would guess they are used in order to help the reader’s imagination of the scenes Aragon presents through his vivid descriptions as well as offer a break from the long paragraphs of writing, however, I found that it was hard for me to simply pick up after the break in reading by an image. As mentioned in the lecture, Aragon abandons the traditional narrative conventions surrounding literature and writing at the time- and maybe still do to some extent in literature today- when writing ‘Paris Peasant’ which prioritises artistic flavour instead. However, I felt that, even as beautiful as the novel and its flair for creative expression is, maybe there is a bit more focus on the ‘artistic’ rather than the actual storytelling.

There is also the matter of the tangle of emotions that are present and make themselves seen as we read the narrative, leaping from one extreme to another and reflects the society Aragon describes in his narrative. While they effectively capture the sense of alienation the author seems to highlight through his writing, there is also the notion that it makes the novel that much harder to grasp due to the many themes and unsaid discussions submerged within the observations of the protagonist.