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Part 2, Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time, Happiness, and Eternal Return
Lightness, Weight, and Dichotomies
Sex, Love, and Duality of Body and Soul
Words and Language
Power, Politics, and Inequality
Summary
Analysis
When Tereza left her small town for Prague to visit Tomas, she felt a slight scratch in her throat. She tried to ignore it, but by the time she arrived at Tomas’s, she was mortified by the loud rumbling of her stomach. Tomas didn’t seem to notice, and he instantly pulled her inside, kissing her. Within minutes, they were making love.
Tereza’s scratchy throat, like her rumbling stomach, is another reminder that she can’t separate her body from her soul. Tomas’s doesn’t notice her stomach—or ignores it if he does—because, as the personification of the body, he doesn’t have the same bodily hang-ups as Tereza does.
Themes
