Previous
Part 6, Chapter 9
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 Sabina thinks of Soviet kitsch becoming reality, it sends a shiver down her spine. She feels much like Tereza felt during her reoccurring dream of being marched naked around the pool. Sabina and Tereza’s fear is the point of kitsch: it is “a folding screen set up to curtain off death.”
Kundera’s language here that communism is a “folding screen” connotes images of the Iron Curtain, which separated those in Communist countries from the capitalist West during the Cold War. Unlike Tereza and Tomas, Sabina did not return to Prague and managed to escape communism, and so Soviet kitsch is not her reality anymore.
Themes
