Resumo de The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Introduction

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a book that explores the theme of lightness and weight as a metaphor for the burdens placed on personal conscience in the face of life?s decisions. This theme is then contrasted with the relationship that exists between the mind (soul) and the body.

The mind of one Thomas ? a Czech Neurosurgeon from Prague ? is the amphitheatre, through which the viewer sees the events and the reasoning behind the life of Tomas and his perennial weight; Tereza.

So, from the onset we are shown a portrait of a man who is introspective, intelligent and yet distrustful of anything that cannot be proven empirically with valid evidence. Tereza ? on the other hand - shares her name with a cannonised saint, Mother Teresa, whose life?s work was to live in the slums of Calcutta in order to feed the ill and the destitute. This quality of self-sacrifice is one that is readily seen in the wholehearted manner in which Teresa allows herself to fall in love with and remain married to Tomas, despite his unfaithfulness.

Part 1: Lightness & Weight

This book opens with two chapters of philosophical narrative that seeks to explain the concept of lightness and weight, with respect to the ?idea of eternal return?. Lightness is defined to be the dilution of significance that repetition seems to accord upon grave matters of human existence. The idea can be likened to the gradual loss of original meaning of words or expressions that are used frequently in colloquial speech: the word ?excellent? no longer carries the same ?weight? or meaning as it did two centuries ago, because in the modern context, repetition has come to give it an infinite number of meanings. So, Kundera argues that while lightness causes us to aspire for the Heavens, weight keeps us grounded in reality. In paragraph 4 of page 5, he says: ?? the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.?

The unbearable aspect of lightness is the hollow feeling one gets after having been compelled by weight, to act in a self-sacrificial manner that promises deeper contentment, but yields no tangible results except a warm fuzzy feeling of moral right-standing, which is an unlikely consolation.

Part 2: Soul & Body

If the first section was about Thomas and his desire for weightlessness, then the second part is about Tereza and the origin of her body ? soul dynamic. Tereza was the offspring of a careless union, a chance occurrence that led to an unplanned pregnancy, which was carried to term because of the inaccessibility of abortive medical services. Now, if someone?s origin was ill-conceived, then it is feasible to assume that their teleology is founded upon unstable grounds. The pregnancy and subsequent marriage of Tereza?s mother ? to her ninth choice suitor - is significant insofar as the fortuitous marriage was a continuation of the fortuitous pregnancy and the unwanted birth. This is underlined by the words that read ?One day she discovered wrinkles near her eyes and she decided that her marriage made no sense?.

The state of the mother?s second marriage contrasts beauty of youth with the ugly consequences of bad decisions that are compounded by age to a point where sadness manifests itself as aesthetic displeasure (ugliness), which suggests the existence of a psycho-somatic link between the state of one?s psyche (emotional health) and the state of one?s physical health (vitality).

These linkages are responsible for the conditioning that Tereza received from her mother, who had given up on her beauty and traded her princess state of having nine kneeling suitors, for the ugly state of kneeling to a man who was a replacement of the ninth suitor.

Conclusion

The Unbearable Lightness of Being isa book about contrasts and the vacillating human mind, which cannot decide which to prefer between fantasy (lightness, soul) and reality (weight, body). These contrasts are conveyed by words and words are by nature loaded with connotations and denotations that can either emphasize or distort the meaning.

The defining piece of text for me is the line on page 52 that reads: ?without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.? From this, it becomes apparent that it does not really matter which is better between lightness and weight, what matters most is the journey of human experience that causes us to attach significance or weight to that which others would otherwise find to be trivial or weightless, such as the significance of Tereza?s shift ending at six vis-à-vis Tomas? room number being six.

[RU1]En muss sein

[RU2]Xolisa Vitsha MA (Politics) Rhodes University

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