

Marcel uses words and scenes that he has never heard or seen to narrate Swann’s story. Despite his claims, Marcel is somehow unable to get to an “accuracy of detail” about Swann. Marcel introduces Swann’s love affair with Odette after Part 2, a story he will recount in Part 3 when he stops being a character in the book and becomes a narrator.Īccording to Marcel, he was given the tale of Swann’s “great affair” with Odette, which started before he was even born. Proust frequently shifts into this essayistic mode in ‘Swann’s Way’ and the other volumes of ‘In Search of Lost Time.’ He delves so deeply into the inner lives of fictional characters that they reveal universal truths.Īccuracy of detail … is easier, often, to obtain when we are studying the lives of people who have been dead for centuries Here, in the opening chapters of ‘Swann’s Way,’ Marcel Proust exhibits his capacity to switch effortlessly between fictitious occurrences and overarching observations about how the world functions. According to Marcel, he experiences this “without knowing where I was ” situation almost daily. The awakening, however, can also cause uncertainty because the person may see other bedrooms from the past and be confused about which one they are in. The sleeping person then awakens, re-enters that sequence, and resumes living. When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours.įor the person who is sleeping, the world is in order, and the “chain of hours” is a part of that order, according to Marcel. The First World War’s atrocities caused the previous social presumptions to be reevaluated, and a lot of 20th-century modernist literature addresses the social and technological developments of modernity.


This literary trend was motivated by a deliberate intention to challenge established forms of representation and communicate the fresh sensibilities of the age. Marcel Proust employed modernist literary techniques in Swann’s Way. Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way comprises intriguing dialogues and interior monologues that hook the audience.
