The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Book Review: Powerful and Reflective
Summary: 4 Stars
It can be hard to summarise what The Unbearable Lightness of Being is about.
At the heart of the novel we have a group of characters whose lives entwine over a period of years. Tomas, the protagonist, is a surgeon living in Prague, renown for his womanising ways and light-hearted take on life. After falling in love and marrying the emotionally vulnerable and naive Tereza, he finds himself trapped between the ongoing desire to explore each and every woman he meets, and remain faithful to his wife.
It was hard for me to hate Tomas: In spite of his philandering ways, I understood his urgent need to take grab life with both hands and float around with it. Having been disappointed with an earlier marriage, he dedicates his life to making the most out of what he can get. Tereza, on the other hand, lives for Tomas: His unfaithful encounters drive her almost insane, and his 'lightness' is the stark contrast to how 'heavy' her love and relationships play a part in her life.
Perhaps it is my own naivety about the world, as I'm still a young adult, that made me empathise and understand Tomas so well - After all, in reality who would tolerate so much infidelity in one relationship? But I found Tereza to be such a pathetic character most of the time. She unknowingly binds herself into these relationships that hurt her (her mother, Tomas, etc.) but refuses to stand tall and discover her own identity.
In contrast to Tereza is Sabina, Tomas' favourite mistress. Sabina is almost the female version of Tomas in that she is the 'lightest' character in the novel: her willingness for freedom (something Tomas craves but can not bring himself to head for) makes her leave her great love, Franz.
While Tomas and Sabina take up the 'lightness' of life, Tereza's mind is 'heavy.' She suffers from nightmares every night, during which she must be soothed and coaxed back to sleep. The only time she finds any kind of identity, anything to be passionate about other than Tomas, is when she snaps pictures of the Communist soldiers during the Soviet takeover in Prague and hands her film over to the international journalists, but even those actions hold a certain naivety about the world.
While this is happening, liberal-minded Tomas openly objects the new government and, such is his lighthearted take on life, finds himself sinking into the lower rungs of society as the novel progresses.
It is Tomas and Tereza's relationship that explores the nature of existence. Through different classes, environments, and political standings in society, the pair are tested on their different outcomes on life. Tomas is eager to fly away with his freedom, but it is Tereza's heaviness that reminds him to stay. Ever since she turned up on his door, he's been left with an image of her as a child being put into a basket and sent downstream to him. It is her naivety and sorrow that attaches him to her, and he resents having the curse of 'compassion' on his shoulders.
While Tomas might have seemed like an unlikeable character to many, I couldn't help feeling my own 'compassion' for him. As I've said, perhaps it is my naive youth, or perhaps it is my history of depression, that has made me scorn Tereza as something I once was, and look at Tomas as something I'd want to strive to be. Though Tomas' exuberance is his eventual downfall (having to give up the one thing he cared about in the world - being a doctor), I'd rather live my life full of passion than full of regret.
I don't ever want to shrug my shoulders and say, with a heaving sigh, "Es muss sein."
I'd recommend this to anyone who likes to read a bit of philosophical fiction. It's far from light (as the title suggests ;-) ) but can work wonders for an internal investigation about your view on life.
Book Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Summary: 5 Stars
I love this book. It really does make you look at life in a different light. This is my second favourite book after 1984. The book is of course up to interpretation but it doesn't ever condone or criticise being unfaithful or sleeping around it merely shows different people's actions and the affect they have on one another. The point being made I thought. was that no matter what your actions are and their intentions, they will have repercussions for others and vice versa, which cannot be controlled. Whatever you take form this book I will not forget it, unlike many other books I have read :)Book Review: Lived up to my high expectations
Summary: 5 Stars
The story is of Tomas and Tereza, and whether they will stay together despite Tomas's constant infidelity. Branching out from this central story are other stories, following the lives, for example, of Tomas's mistress Sabina and her new lover Franz. The central theme is explored through the lives of the various characters. Is it better to be light or heavy? Lives full of responsibility and attachment are heavy and burdensome, but "closer to the earth", "more real and truthful." Lives that are light contain no burdens and allow a person to soar, "his movements as free as they are insignificant".
Sabina abandons her family and everyone who means anything to her, and ends up in America selling her paintings, making money, doing well and feeling empty. She has no burdens, no attachments, no real meaning or purpose. She composes a will saying she wants to be cremated and her ashes scattered on the winds. "She wanted to die under the sign of lightness". Tomas, on the other hand, chooses heaviness. He has opportunities to escape from his burdens - he gets out of Czechoslovakia and is living in Vienna, for example, but goes back to find Tereza. He loses his job as a doctor because of writing an article critical of the regime, and is offered several chances at redemption by renouncing his article. But he chooses not to, and so his life becomes harder and harder, heavier and heavier.
By the end of the book, the heavier life comes to seem preferable, to me anyway. It has more sorrow, but that's because there is more to care about. Lightness, the absence of ties or emotional attachments, is easier on the surface, but ultimately meaningless, and therefore unbearable.
I also enjoyed the "Short dictionary of misunderstood words", a series of chapters in which Kundera shows how Franz and Sabina think they understand each other but don't, because they are using the same words to mean different things. They have met relatively late in life, and are old enough to have accumulated their own meanings and associations and memories, of which the other person is not a part. Whereas Tomas and Sabina were young and could create their own meanings together, Franz and Sabina are too old to do this.
I thought this was a great insight, and the book was full of them. Kundera is a close observer of the human condition, and always finds fresh, innovative ways of expressing his ideas. I had high expectations of this book, and it easily lived up to them.