The unbearable lightness of being - Essay Example

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Character Analysis Introduction The book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera is a philosophical study that examines the nature of love and sex, as well as the nature of life through the experiences of a man and his wife, the man’s lover, his lover’s lover, and a dog. In a voyeuristic view of the life that Tomas, the main character lives, the lives of the other characters revolve and grow around the concepts with which Tomas has framed his life. As in all relationships, the pasts help emerging dynamics that reflect the moments within the experiences that each of them have within the events that occur. The character of Tomas is the core of the examination of existence that is made thru Kundera’s discourse in the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Ethnicity One of the ways in which the center of the discourse is created is through the reflection of the Czech culture that is the foundation of the identities of the main characters. The status of the national stability is part of the influential aspects of the social framework in which the discussion is created. According to Barker and Galasinski, “ethnic identification is attained through the linguistic action and interaction of specifically located speaking subjects” (122). The characters in the book are developed through the existence of their culture, not as examples of, or through stereotypical rendition of their characteristics, but as acting members of the Czech culture in which life is occurring as it is woven within that part of their identity. Ethnicity is the sharing of “norms, values, beliefs, cultural symbols, and practices” formed upon “common cultural signifiers, which have developed under specific historical, social, and political contexts and which encourage a sense of belonging based, at least in part, on a common mythology ancestry” (122). The subject of ethnicity is within the novel through the natural representation of individual within a society. Through the common cultural signifiers that emerge about the nature of life within the nation of Czechslovokia during that time, the way in which the individual character’s behave, is in part, based upon the climate of the culture in which the events take place. The concept of ethnic identity colors the way in which the events take shape, part of which is defined by the activism that Tomas feels and expresses. The way in which ethnicity is relevant is in understanding how it is framed. According to Barker and Galasinski, the anti-essentialist point of view is to define ethnicity primarily by what it does not represent. As an example, a man from Scotland will identify himself as being not English. An American will identify themselves as being not Canadian. The definition isn’t about what is a characteristic, however, but about what differentiates one social group from another. While social sciences tend to instruct on the nature of an ethnic identity based upon what is identified as characteristics of a cultural identity, the individual as they experience the identity most often present ways in which ’otherness’ is represented to them. In other words, the cultural norms that do not identify them with their ethnic group develops into a framework in which they are differentiated from other culture. Kundera discusses the nature of deconstructing an ethnic identity through the power of forgetting. The power that a dominate power has over others is to make them forget who they are. A story once was told that upon taking over the United States, teachers who represented an opposing force cut up the flag and made it into tiny pieces, handing them out to the students so that they could all have a piece of the flag. However, in destroying the flag, the teachers were defining a space of forgetting in which the national identity, while distributed, was being destroyed as the images of that identity was being destroyed. Kundera is quoted as saying “When a big power wants to deprive a small country of its national consciousness it uses the method of organized forgetting” (12). Kundera sets his novel in the repressed state of Czechoslovakia after the invasion of the Soviet Union which occurred in 1968. Tomas is a politically humiliated surgeon. Within the framework of discussing the ethnic identity, the repression of the state of Czechoslovakia becomes a central factor in the development of Tomas’ character. Tomas is a womanizer, his misogynistic objectification can be put into context with the repressive state of his nation which has taken from him the dignity of his practice of medicine. In having to escape after the invasion, they become displaced but the skill that he can continue is defined by his sexual conquests. Tomas can express his rebellion through continuing to use women within a sexual context. Identity The theme of identity is strong within the novel. The narrator, from the beginning, frames the characters as fictional. This creates a dynamic within the novel that is defined by the idea that the characters are not real, but then questions what a real character or identity would mean. The story reads like a lyrical philosophical discourse, the nature of its narrative representative of themes rather than sucking the reader into an alternative world. This is not to say that the universe that is created is not successful, but that the ideas that are presented hold an even greater power. The story is proving its themes through its characters, rather than the experiences of the characters defining the journey. On the first page, Kumera writes “the myth of eternal return states that a life that disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror sublimity or beauty mean nothing” (3). The pessimism in this novel is structured around the idea that each event, each moment is truly meaningless and the meaning that events and moments are given are arbitrarily culturally defined. What is done only has meaning when it is given meaning. Love, within the context of the way that Kumera writes his work, is meaningless except for the way in which it is given meaning. The emotional feeling of love as it is transitory and ever changing becomes a part of the discourse on the concept that life’s moments are only moments and the past and the future have no meaning in the end. This is not a suggestion that there is no love but that love is not a stable or constant within life. The nature of the way I which love develops is based upon an idea of someone, that moment opening up the path. The moments of each life are singular, and because of this singularity, holding on to each is an impossible task. What love becomes is a way of creating identity. One identifies themselves by associating themselves to love and to the reasons that they chose with whom to be in love. An example of this is that as Tomas falls for Tereze, he does so through the pathway of nurture. He has the drive to nurture as she seems a child to him and someone who needs him. When Tomas uses the metaphor of the baby in the basket, sent down the river to the Pharaoh’s daughter, the narrator sets the stage for the importance of metaphor. This creates a sense that all that is being written is carrying metaphor like a burden, each moment suddenly a reflection of the human condition. Therefore, he writes “A single metaphor can birth love!”(Kumera 11). Oppression and Sexuality The defining concept that is represented in the use of sexuality within the novel is in the way in which power is the objective, standing out over any other relevant theme in regard to sexual conquest. Women are objects of humiliation and degradation, their experiences defined by objectification over mutual and equal gratification. Even in the way in which Tomas loves Tereze, it is with the result of humiliation. Tomas cannot focus on his wife as the object of his passions. He can only focus on his need to express his sexuality, his oppressive nature and the discourse of humiliation that is a part of his sexual being. This is a part of how he expresses his rebellions and angers. However, in focusing his sexual needs in other directions, his pulling something away from Tereze, destroying what he had created between them. Conversely, Tomas admits that he has jealousy for Tereze. He states “This absurd jealousy, grounded as it was in mere hypotheses, proved that he considered her fidelity an unconditional postulate of their relationship” (Kumera 18). Tomas had merely thought about Tereze with someone else and had been moved to jealousy. On the other hand, he does not end his behaviors that lead him to be unfaithful. Tereze is tortured by dreams that symbolize the fears that she has of his betrayal. She begins to fear all women and hate them for being potential lovers. Even though Tomas understands her feeling as he has felt it himself, he does not stop doing the things that would hurt her. Tomas admits that her fidelity is necessary for them to have a relationship, but does not seem to understand that this is a part of his contact within the relationship as well. As Tereze is tormented, he sees her as fragile and only barely admits her right to her pain. Even the narration tends to focus on her weakness rather than focusing on his betrayals. In her dreams she saw Tomas in a basket above a group of women who were told to march around a pool and if a woman failed to perform to his direction, he would kill them. This dream seems to reveal her feeling that he was in control, that his power was absolute within their relationship. The sadness was that in the dynamic they had constructed, this was true. The narrator writes “Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman)” (Kumera 15). This concept is inaccurate, of course, in regard to the social norms of most of the Western world. Although it has been the claim of men who had no desire to be faithful, this idea is a part of the abysmal misogynistic point of view that suggests that there is a dividing line between sex and love. This is the theory on sex and love that Tomas adopts, his life defined by the idea that to love someone is not an obligatory space in which he was responsible for her, even though he explicitly states that she holds that type of responsibility to him. The oppression that Tereze experiences is expanded to the point where in an episode between her and Sabine, Sabine asks her to remove her clothes to be photographed. Despite her humiliation, she does this, making herself vulnerable in front of Tomas’ mistress. Despite the sexuality of the scene, it is not a scene of an expression of mutuality, but once again one of power. This is reflective of the power that Tomas holds over her. The power of the mistress is an extension of the way in which Tomas has trapped Tereze in her love for him, without giving her love the respect expected Of course, this relates back to the nature of ethnic identity, in this case, the structures of mating beliefs within the Western cultures. The concept of monogamy is such that to step outside the boundaries of this tradition is a direct threat to the relationships that develop within these cultures. There have been other cultures who have not adapted to the concept of monogamy, and in those cultures jealousy is not a standard. However, the concept of companionate marriage is the standard in most Christian based Western cultures which represents a social contract in which monogamy is a part of the expected structure (Posner 257). When this is denied, then a portion of the implied social contract has been violated. This is the disrespect and humiliation that Tereze must face from an indoctrination of expectations and values that suggest that she is less for accepting this arrangement. Within the context of the betrayal that Tereze has experienced, the concept is explored as a positive. At this point, it must be understood that the novel challenges most of the preconceived ideas that Western culture considers for values and morals. Betrayal is an adventure in which the norms are challenged. Sabina represents betrayal within the framework of the philosophical discourse that is created by Kundera. She represents Kundera as she is the artist who is within a duality of two worlds. As well she transcends gender as she uses her grandfather’s bowler hat as a means of seduction, naked with nothing else as clothing, becoming both genders. Newman states “Tomas, himself a violator of decorum, is attracted. Franz, who likes his illusions more secure, is confused” (105). Tomas is one who challenges convention as the cultural shifts have delivered him powerless, in his sexual control, he finds power. Sabine challenges him with her sexuality and understands what is driving his adventures. The idea of betrayal evoked an excitement within Sabine. Soloman writes about the misunderstanding of the trust an betrayal as innocence and malevolence. “Betrayal means breaking ranks, going off into the unknown. Sabine knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown” (Kundera). The concept of betrayal can be seen as ‘forbidden fruit’, the expectation that in doing something, the risk of what can be lost has value. Betrayal only exists if the expectation of betrayal has weight. Within the context of ‘lightness’, betrayal has no meaning. Therefore, the character of Tomas is chasing meaning and finding none within any of the frameworks of his life. The humiliation that Tomas levels onto Tereze, in contrast to the way in which Sabine responds to the nature of Tomas, provides a bleak, blatant contrast in which the nature of the body, its development as a functioning instrument, is used as a metaphor for the female self in the differences between Sabine and Tereze. According to Newman, the idea of Tomas putting Sabine onto the toilet as she would void her bowels was an idea of high excitement for her, where Tereze uses the same function as a way to humiliate herself during the scene with the conductor. In this instance, she does this “to become only and utterly a body, the body her mother used to say was good for nothing but excreting and digesting” (Kundera 157). In this contrast of body image, both women exhibit self-hatred, but where one revels in the dark pleasures, the other is repressed by hauntings. Conclusion The nature of the situation is such that Tomas must go through a transformation in order to find a space in which he can truly exist as someone who loves. It must be noted, however, that love is not a primary theme. Even as Tomas returns from Zurich to be with Tereze, he has a vision of them both in the cold, reflecting the feelings of each other as they both shake, but cold and isolated from each other’s warmth. Tereze has a similar imagery in her experience, thus suggesting the fluid nature of love. As he feels that cold in one point, she feels it in another. In this, they represent the nature of the moments of life, their situation never full reflecting the nature of their mutual experiences, but staying in a state of isolated moments. The character of Tomas, just like all of the characters of the work by Kundera, symbolizes the state of life in which lightness provides for a lack of meaning, that moments are nothing but a passing of time. Within the framework of his nature, his life explored through his inability to pass on his temptations and his temptations being the source of great pain for his betrayal, life is revealed as allegorically representative of the way in which humanity treads water, thickened with mud and without the beauty that seems to be desired but never reached. The body, the self, and the identity are all wound up in creations of meanings that have an intended weight, but in the end they are light, without the weight that humanity creates to give life meaning. Tomas reveals his desperation through the way in which he loves, the way in which he engages in womanizing, and the way in which he pursues his life. The lack of meaning in his life is unbearable as he does what he can to avoid meaning, all the while pursuing it with fervor and recklessness. Works Cited Angus, Ian H. Ethnicity in a Technological Age. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988. Print. Barker, Chris, and Dariusz Galasinski. Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis: A Dialogue on Language and Identity. London: Sage Publ, 2001. Print. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Perennial Classics, 1999. Print. Newman, Robert D. Transgressions of Reading: Narrative Engagement As Exile and Return. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Print. Posner, Richard A. Sex and Reason. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1994. Print. Read More