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Part 3, Chapter 7
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
In Rome, Franz tells Sabina about confessing to Marie-Claude, and Sabina feels as if he has “pried open the doors of their privacy.” Now that their affair has been made public, it will “gain weight” and “become a burden,” Sabina says. She tells Franz that she isn’t angry, but she doesn’t share his joy in coming clean to Marie-Claude.
Privacy is a big deal to Sabina because she had so little of it in Czechoslovakia. Tereza later says that the whole of Czechoslovakia is a concentration camp because they have no privacy, and Sabina definitely feels this here. Sabina’s comment that in their relationship will “gain weight” and “become a burden” again assumes that weight is a negative thing, but Kundera asserts this isn’t necessarily true. The fact that something “light” like their affair can transform into something “heavy” also indicates that these seeming opposites aren’t actually mutually exclusive.
Themes
