Narrator

The narrator is a man of undetermined age who is recalling his youth as a member of an upper- middle class family in France. The family has a home in Paris and spends their summers in Combray. The Narrator never reveals his name or his physical description to the reader, speaking in first person throughout three of the four chapters of the book, devoting one chapter exclusively to the description of Charles Swann's pursuit and unhappy love affair with Odette. The Narrator is a sickly child who dwells on details and uses metaphors to describe his surroundings, the people he meets and the places he visits. When he finds something he likes, he likes it immensely, pouring himself into the tiniest fragments of its existence. He obsesses about people, such as actresses, and then specific individuals, as in the writer Bergotte, and in the person of Gilberte. The...