Reflection - 'Combray' By Marcel Proust

 My initial thoughts on the novel while I was reading it was that I found it to be rather confusing. However, I was having trouble finding precisely why it was such a hard read. I think that even though the level of the vocabulary was not overly difficult, the style of writing was rather confusing as certain sentences seemed to be strung together even though they did not have much of any relationship to each other making it hard to make sense of what was happening. In one sense this sort of makes sense as oftentimes when remembering something in detail your mind tends to wander or go on a tangent, however without context, it becomes a bit hard to follow what is happening. One of the other reasons (at least for me) was that the author would often shift from the past to the present without any real indication. It was also difficult for me to figure out if the author was reflecting on the events of his past as an adult or whether he was conveying how he felt as a child during that time.

Despite being a hard read there were a couple of parts that I enjoyed or found interesting. For example the great-aunt's perception of class and the way she negatively viewed people who would venture outside of their respective social class and how this influenced her treatment of monsieur Swann.

The narrator's relationship with his mother was also one of the focal points of the story that I enjoyed reading about. I found that it was interesting to see how both his parents had different ways of handling their child’s behavior. And that his father, instead of getting mad at his child for sneaking out of his room to be comforted by his mother, he suddenly able to see for himself the true scope of the loneliness and sadness that his child felt. Even though there was no mention of his father changing his harsh treatment of his son by pushing this expectation of how he should act, it was still nice to see that he still had a heart. I found it hard to agree or disagree with how harsh the expectations his father has for him as his age at the time of these events is never explicitly mentioned in the text.

My question to everyone: Do you think the narrator's parent’s treatment and the expectations they have for him are justified? Would his age at the time also affect your answer?