Unconscious Remembering's and Proust

    Proust uses drawn out monologues to convey moments of unconscious remembering's to the reader which point towards feelings of nostalgia and love. I found the narrators dialogues very captivating yet confusing at times. It felt as if his mind was jumping from one thought to another, or more like one remembrance to another as more senses awakened them within him. Remembering things stored away often feels difficult to do on command but Proust highlights that this can happen unconsciously through familiar scents or surroundings. 

    I found his relationship with his mother to be very interesting. At first I thought it odd that he was so attached to her but then I remembered that as children we see our parents as our means of survival and I understand his desperate attempt to get her to come and kiss him goodnight. When we lose them in a store we panic because we know we do not have the knowledge or means to make it on our own. For him, he sees his mother as a solace for moments of stress. Her kiss before bed acts as a reminder that he is safe in his home. When she does not come up and kiss him goodnight it leads to a feeling of rejection. This feeling for children can equate to desertion. The narrator discusses how our bodies keep track of memories; "Habit is the slow but sure homemaker—she lets your mind suffer for weeks in temporary quarters, but it is glad of her all the same since without her it would be quite unable to make one feel at home anywhere." This passage depicts how the habit of his mother kissing him each night and the consolation that brought him makes him feel at home. It is a feeling of familiarity and learnt comfort. 

His memories of being a child point towards the guilt and stress we feel as children when we feel as though we have failed to please our parents. This desire to do so can then turn into this urge to fix things. This is shown in his need to mend his great aunts relationship with his grandma. The narrator mentions that this dynamic frustrates him so much that he felt like assaulting his great aunt. He then mentions that he did what anyone did when they witness injustice, he left and cried away from his family. This is showing of the large effect that family dynamics can have on a child. Despite having a hard time understanding Proust's writing style, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and found the idea of "involuntary memory" and the way that it is shown through his writing to be very interesting. 

My question is; Why do you think he yearns to return to Combray? Was it the ties we have as children to certain places and the emotion that it may evoke or something different entirely? Why might it be that we still yearn for places or moments that may be tied to stressful memories?