The writing here is beautiful, especially when Proust allows us to peak behind the veil and see Marcel's emotions. The return to the seaside town of Balbec has Marcel reflecting on changes in his life ~~ and the memories of his trips to Balbec with his grandmother.

What role do horses play in the book, and how are they characterized? How are the “souls” of horses seen to differ from those of men? Sodom and Gomorrah are two of the five "cities of the plain" referred in Genesis 13:12 and Genesis 19:29 that rebel against Chedorlaomer of Elam, to whom they were subject. At the Battle of Siddim, Chedorlaomer defeats them and takes many captives, including Lot, the nephew of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham. Abraham gathers his men, rescues Lot, and frees the cities.

Book Summary

M. de Charlus shows us why we live in a better world today in this respect: he spends all his time countering a presumption about his homosexuality he anticipates in others, though as the narrator tells us, he’s often wrong. Sadly though his every reflex is meant to send a message often counter to his true feelings. Perhaps this accounts for his class snobbery and hideous cruelty to those of lesser rank. Class snobbery which goes out the window if a beautiful boy turns his head. I have to mention here that I am a very reserved person, in the effect that while I feel as rapidly and as strongly as Proust so often describes, I do not act on it. As a result, I have an extremely low tolerance for ridiculous heights of selfish idiocy, something that I have observed in the narrator as well as other characters in ISOLT but was able to forgive when offered with wonderful passages of crystalline insight. There is also my extreme dislike of stereotyping, especially with regards to multitudes of varied souls that populate humanity in seemingly discriminate bunches. In effect, these two aspects of my personality lessened my compatibility with this book, something that saddens me but cannot be helped. Many who interpret the stories in a non-sexual context contend that as the word for "strange" is akin to "another", "other", "altered" or even "next", the meaning is unclear, and if the condemnation of Sodom was the result of sexual activities perceived to be perverse, then it is likely that it was because women sought to commit fornication with "other than human" angels, [92] perhaps referring to Genesis 6:1–4 [93] or the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Countering this, it is pointed out that Genesis 6 refers to angels seeking women, not men seeking angels, and that both Sodom and Gomorrah were engaged in the sin Jude describes before the angelic visitation, and that, regardless, it is doubtful that the Sodomites knew they were angels. In addition, it is argued the word used in the King James Version of the Bible for "strange", can mean unlawful or corrupted (e.g. in Romans 7:3, Galatians 1:6), and that the apocryphal Second Book of Enoch condemns "sodomitic" sex (2 Enoch 10:3; 34:1), [94] thus indicating that homosexual relations was the prevalent physical sin of Sodom. [95] Gagnon, Robert A.J. (1989-10-11). "response to prof. l. William Countryman's review in Anglican theological review; On Careless Exegesis and Jude 7". Robgagnon.net . Retrieved 2013-04-25.

You could see that the revolution hadnt done them no good. […] They didnt have no reason to be hospitable to anybody. Least of all a gringo kid. That plateful of beans they set in front of you was hard come by. But I was never turned away. Not a time. Cole, unlike the others, surrenders his heart to a young woman working at The White Lake, a higher-class brothel. Billy Parham, nearing thirty years old and nine years older than Cole, dispenses wisdom to Cole on the latter’s love life. Cole ignores it, which leads to the novel’s tragic and bloody conclusion—a knife fight with Eduardo, manager of The White Lake. Parham is a form of El Paso—rugged, realistic and rational—and the younger Cole, blindly in love, is influenced psychically by Juarez. He is recognized by other cowboys as the most skilled, the most graceful horseman, the best that a cowboy can be—a natural. Yet his Juarez psyche weakens him. He is the id to his close friend Billy’s commonsensical American ego.But this narrator has philosophical ambitions. The point of his recursive tale seems to be twofold. First, the world is a fated and fatalistic place, and we cannot escape our destiny (the implication is that John Grady was always already fated to die for his idealism): The provision of bread and water to the poor was also a capital offense (Yalḳ., Gen. 83). Two girls, one poor and the other rich, went to a well, and the former gave the latter her jug of water, receiving in return a vessel containing bread. When this became known, both were burned alive (ib.). [70] According to the Book of Jasher, Paltith, one of Lot's daughters, was burnt alive (in some versions, on a pyre) for giving a poor man bread. [71] Her cries went to the heavens. [66] Another woman was similarly executed in Admah for giving a traveler, who intended to leave the town the next day, water. When the scandal was revealed, the woman was stripped naked and covered with honey. This attracted bees as the woman was slowly stung to death. Her cries then went up into the heavens, the turning point that was revealed to have provoked God to enact judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah in the first place in Genesis 18:20. [72] [69] Lot's wife (who came from Sodom) had disapproved of her husband welcoming the strangers into their home; her asking for salt from neighbors had alerted the mob which came to Lot's door. As punishment she was turned into a pillar of salt. [73]

This is more than just a new focus on homosexuality (which for Proust is mainly seen under the old model of ‘inversion’); it's part of what we'd now call a general ‘queering’ of the entire narrative, where gender identities and the polarities of sexual attraction all dissolve into a haze of unspecific frustration and misdirected arousal. Everything, not just sex, is slipping out of kilter: the Duc de Guermantes goes from a committed nationalist to a fervent Dreyfusard, while Saint-Loup goes the other way; an excursus on toponymy s Bert de Vries, "Archaeology in Jordan", ed. Pierre Bikai, American Journal of Archaeology 97, no. 3 (1993): 482. A common thread in the four books so far is the author's crushes, his fixations, his obsessions, with a female figure. In the first two books it's Gilberte, the daughter of the Swanns. He discovers her when he and she are young children in Combray. They reunite in later years in Paris. He eventually befriends the Swanns. The other is Albertine who he encounters in Balbec. She seems less pretty and definitely not as smart or literate as Gilberte, but his obsession is still as strong. He acts possessive and jealous with the girls, which is understandably off-putting to them and to the reader, as well. In 3 Maccabees 2:5, [25] the high priest Simon says that God "consumed with fire and sulfur the men of Sodom who acted arrogantly, who were notorious for their vices; and you made them an example to those who should come afterward". Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus will it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.During a visit to a brothel in Juárez, John Grady falls in love with a young, epileptic prostitute, Magdalena. The couple plans to marry and live in the U.S., and John Grady renovates an abandoned cabin, turning it into a home. But Magdalena's brothel is run by Eduardo, a formidable adversary also in love with the young girl. Billy attempts to dissuade John Grady but feels obligated to help the couple. Staff (September 20, 2018). "Sodom and Gomorrah: A Story about Sin and Judgment". Zondervan . Retrieved April 19, 2019. Like a slow-acting hallucinogen, the book has managed to transform a Texas boy of sixteen looking for adventure into a mysterious figure that augurs the destruction of the world' – Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room Hershel Shanks (September–October 1980). "BAR Interviews Giovanni Pettinato". Biblical Archaeology Review. 6 (5).