This first section of Michael Proust’s Combray is to me a tangled web of meaning and tangential breaks that feels as disconnected and warped as the narrator feels when dealing with sleep. First things first that was a lot of commas. Almost every other sentence is broken apart multiple times. Which honestly as a reader was definitely very confusing, this combined with the what I believe are like allegorical tangents throughout the first couple pages makes starting this particular text a process. At first I thought he was crippled from the waist down due to Proust’ switching between his own personal narrative and these tangents without any large indications other than the switching of pronouns. But after understanding that these are more targets to explore the feelings that our narrator experiences made me much more open to them as a literary device. `Continuing on with the theme of structure the other thing I noticed was that the world order is more similar to that of French/German(these are the only two languages I have some experience with) than that of a native english writer. It takes a little bit to get used to as the overall flow of a lot of the sentences doesn’t feel natural to me. But I would not consider this a detriment I believe it fits with the themes of the narrative, although this is most likely not an intentional choice rather a quirk of translation, and adds to the overall atmosphere.

As far as the narrative goes I quite liked it yet was also strangely discomforted by it. Reading about this child and the very tangible fear and discomfort he is experiencing made me feel a similar level of discomfort. As well the ritual of kissing his mother to allow him to go asleep makes me believe that Proust is dealing with a mental illness. And as we see through the narrative as Proust has an extreme outburst of emotion causes his mother to stay with him we are exposed to Proust’s undeniable depression. This overarching angst and sadness combined with the focus on the conflict of our preconceptions and reality makes the way the narrator describes his life feel disconnected. As well Proust through the use of vivid diction really allows us to understand the through the first few pages and then later along at the dinner party the severity of his feelings. As an introduction we are thrust into the dark place of this childs mind and the combination of vocabulary, atypical sentence structure, and the tangents create a world that feels adolescent.