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Marie-Claude
Tereza and Tomas’s dog. Tomas buys Karenin for Tereza after they are married, and Tereza names him after a character in her favorite book, Anna Karenina. Karenin is half German shepherd, half Saint Bernard, and he is actually a female, even though Tereza gives him a masculine name and addresses him using masculine pronouns. In this way, Karenin represents the blending of dichotomies and collapse of polar opposites. By being both masculine and feminine, German shepherd and Saint Bernard, Karenin renders these opposing characteristics meaningless, which underscores the arbitrary nature of language. Tereza and Tomas have Karenin for years, and they establish a comfortable and repetitive routine, until Karenin gets cancer and dies at the end of the novel. Tereza is heartbroken after Karenin’s death—he was perhaps her sole source of happiness while he was alive. Kundera asserts that happiness is a desire for repetition, and Karenin brings this repetition to Tereza’s life. Unlike human time, dog time, according to Kundera, is not linear but circular—“like the hands of a clock.” Because of this, in addition to the fact that dogs were not expelled from Paradise, only a dog can give a human the gift the “idyll,” or true happiness, which is exactly what he gives to Tereza.
Karenin Quotes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The The Unbearable Lightness of Being quotes below are all either spoken by Karenin or refer to Karenin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 7, Chapter 4
Quotes
But most of all: No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. Karenin surrounded Tereza and Tomas with a life based on repetition, and he expected the same from them.
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If Karenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, “Look, I’m sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Can’t you come up with something different?’’ And therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition
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Karenin Quotes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The The Unbearable Lightness of Being quotes below are all either spoken by Karenin or refer to Karenin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 7, Chapter 4
Quotes
But most of all: No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. Karenin surrounded Tereza and Tomas with a life based on repetition, and he expected the same from them.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
If Karenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, “Look, I’m sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Can’t you come up with something different?’’ And therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
