I am lingering in a room with a group of peers. We are sitting at a tall and wide circular table, on barstool sized chairs. I am telling my peers about how I can talk to snakes, when the situation suddenly gets tense and a group of 10-20 Rattlesnakes wriggle into the room. I try and calm everyone… “don’t worry as long as we don’t move and we relax, then they won’t bother us” I say.

Without warning, one rattler comes right up to and bites me on the middle of my lower leg. I feel intense pain and then start to act drunk and sloth my way around the room. The group of my peers say “This’ll be no problem for you Jared, Your snake talker, you speak to snakes!”.

For some reason this dream seems extremely important to me. It’s one of the most reasonable dreams I have had (forgetting the talking to snakes portion). The imagery of a group of rattlesnakes, with one biting me, while still having little to no care for it biting me is important to me. Rattlesnakes now stand as important symbolic figures in my life AND what I have taken from the dream is, even if I am to get bitten by rattler, as painful as that experience may be, there will only be healing and rewards afterwards. I’m not going to go out and get purposefully bit by a rattler now. But I respect them and look for their fragments of advice.

About midway through Combray II, when visiting his uncle and his uncle’s lady companion our narrator becomes “disillusioned” and his world as it exists is slightly shattered. As he explains “I felt somewhat disillusioned, for this young lady was in no way different from other pretty women who I had seen from time to time at home… I could find no trace in her of the theatrical appearance which I admired in photographs of actresses, nothing of the diabolical expression which would have been in keeping with the life she must lead” (Proust 105).

This conviction comes from our child narrator, who is realizing for the second time that a persons occupation or beliefs will not necessarily be reflected in their attire. Previously, he assumed that if someone is going to be an actor or actress, they should look like this or that. For one, because he had seen them in photos as such and also because his parents and society at large had dictated that this type of clothing or interest equals this class of person.

Later his disillusionment apparently turns to respect for the lady: “it has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote their generosity, their talent, a disposable dream of sentimental beauty… and a wealth that counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rough, ill-polished lives of men” (Proust 106-107).

Both of these realizations that appeared in the narrator’s childhood reflect on women and their positions in society. First he realizes that maybe even ‘common’ looking women could be actresses too and secondly how the women around him devote their lives to men who he sees as “ill-polished”.

When I finally get the chance to take a walk in the woods, my world relaxes and I wonder to myself “what is so important?… that I spend all of this time away from the woods, a forest, nature, laying in a field, hiking, etc?”. How could these things I fill my day up with be SOO important?

After all, I do have ambition. I want to create this and participate in that, But my life gets filled up with all of these obligations and ambitions and I lose all of the time I COULD USE to sit quietly or to take a walk in the woods. To lay in a field and feel the ferns rustle and the planes fly overhead.

I will even walk in the rain! I enjoy it just as much! (I am not a fan of the destructive being known as John Lennon but I do appreciate some of his words) “When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. They might as well be dead. When the rain comes. I can show you that when it rains and shines. It’s just a state of mind. I can show you”.