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Part 2, Chapter 12
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 Tomas and Tereza made love, Tereza screamed at the top of her lungs. Her scream was not one of pleasure or sensuality; it was an attempt to cripple her senses. She wanted to “banish all contradictions,” including the duality of body and soul. That night, she fell asleep holding Tomas’s hand, and she held it tightly all night long.
Kundera’s choice of language in that Tereza wants to “banish all contradictions” again points to the instability of language and the fallacy of opposites. By bringing together and merging the duality of body and soul, Tereza obliterates these two opposites, effectively rendering them meaningless.
Themes
