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Part 4, Chapter 8
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
One day, a young man of about 16 comes into Tereza’s restaurant and begins to flirt with her. He compliments Tereza’s legs and asks for a drink, but Tereza won’t give him one. He leaves and goes to another bar, and when he returns, he is clearly drunk. He has returned to look at Tereza’s legs, he says, and then he tells her he loves her. An obnoxious man at the bar assumes that Tereza has illegally served the young man alcohol and begins to yell at her. A tall stranger interjects and tells him to shut up. Tereza thanks the tall stranger for sticking up for her, and then he leaves.
While it is never confirmed, Tereza later wonders if the young drunk man was a trap set by the secret police (Tereza later finds out that the obnoxious man is secret police) to incriminate and then imprison her. She even wonders if the tall man, (whom she later has a sexual encounter with) is involved as well. This level of paranoia again illustrates the power of the Russians over the Czech people, as Tereza lives in fear that she will be trapped and falsely incriminated for one thing or another.
Themes
