The final volume of In Search of Lost Time finds the narrator years later, after time away from Paris and a period of the First World War seen from the home front. He returns to society and sees how much the people he once knew have changed. A series of unexpected sensations brings back the past with great force, and leads him to understand what his life has been and what he might make of it. The book gathers the themes of the whole work, memory, art, habit and time, and shows why the long journey was worth taking.