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Part 4, Chapter 18
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
Outside the bathroom, Tereza stands on the other side of the curtain. The tall stranger calls her from behind the curtain, and she feels the urge to cry. She wants to go to him, but she knows that if she does, she will fall in love with him. She grabs her clothes, dresses quickly, and leaves.
The fact that Tereza could fall in love so easily suggests that there is nothing special about her love for Tomas. She could have, quite literally, fallen in love with anyone, and she earlier said that she could have even fallen in love with one of Tomas’s friends. In this light, it is Tomas who appears to love Tereza more, despite his infidelity. He has been with hundreds of women, but he only fell in love with Tereza—just as he’s been insisting all along.
Themes
