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Part 4, Chapter 17
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
Alone in the tall stranger’s bathroom, Tereza sits on the cold porcelain toilet. She feels the urge to empty her bowels and “go to the extreme of humiliation.” She wants to be only a body reduced to its functions. After evacuating her bowels, Tereza feels intensely depressed.
Here, Tereza’s soul seems to reject her body’s behavior, but Tereza’s trip to the bathroom also reduces her to a mere body and its physiological functions. For Tereza, this is the height of humiliation, as she detests bodies—especially bodily functions.
Themes
