Review of the Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Review of The unbearable lightness of being

The unbearable lightness of being- a love story, a novel of love and obsession or a philosophical wonderment? Whichever you decide you can be assured that, with clever coincidences and the heavy reliance in philosophy this is a novel which promises a journey in which you will question many ideas and visit your own.

This is the tale of a Prague physician, Tomas, who with his wife Tereza escapes to Zurich in 1968. When Tomas and his infidelities drive his wife away and force her to return to Prague he follows her. After publishing a piece in a newspaper Tomas loses his license to practice medicine and he decides to become a window washer. Yet he decides for now that he is happier for a while in a job he doesn't have to think about. In the meantime, his philandering increases. We as the reader are left to wonder whether it is weakness or strength that keeps them together. Kundera's narrator explores these and other vital questions of being throughout the novel.

In this novel Kundera uses characters to ponder a number of meaningful questions, yet even so these characters are intriguing and manage to hold the attentions of the reader well. Within this novel kundera explores choice, he ponders the choices people make and how it comes about. Kunderas’ main aim in this book seems to me to be the exploration of human existence, in which he views the world with ideas of lightness and weight. In each sense he uses the ideas of well known philosophers. Parmenides viewed the world divided into pairs of opposites- light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/non being. He believed the most ambiguous, most mysterious certainty of all to be the opposition of lightness and weight. And it is exactly this that Kundera appears to be searching for the answers to throughout the novel.

There are four different characters in the book. Together, weighted in different ways, they can almost describe every person. They feel and interpret emotions and situations in different ways- everyone offers their own point of view. The reasoning for this is that everything must be seen from a relative point of view. We learn to always keep in mind that something can appear very differently when seen from a different perspective. This novel also seems to have many different layers and presents a number of different perspectives. Kundera does not merely scratch the surface of meaning, yet instead he delves deep within, exploring many possible explanations for the answers to previously unanswerable questions.

Themes are important to this novel and some contrast one another- optimism and pessimism, lightness and weight. An example of an important motif which is referred to on a number of occasions throughout the novel is of Tereza as the ‘baby in the bulrush basket’. What is interesting is that the different characters also represent different extremes. Franz and Sabina represent the extremes of heaviness and lightness, Sabina is so light that she betrays him and she reacts to heaviness with instinctive dislike. Franz, the man she almost loves, is supremely heavy. We are shown two couples who both carry one light and one heavy person but each couple choose completely different paths. Kundera explores each of these different paths. Tomas and Tereza decide to stay together; Sabina and Franz part ways. We learn a lot about relationships during the novel and see contrasts between the two couples as they choose their different paths. We learn that Franz and Sabina are incompatible and don’t have a lot of history together, yet on the other hand Tomas understands Sabina and I get the sense that she wants Franz to be more like him. Franz and Sabina each have a history without one another and certain subjects provoke disagreements.

A beautifully written book, the unbearable lightness of being is both sensual and intellectual and I would recommend it to anyone who is seeking a novel which is both enlightening and refreshing.