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Part 6, Chapter 10
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 the world of totalitarian kitsch, questions are not permitted, which means that one who asks questions is the complete enemy of kitsch. Asking questions is like cutting through the backdrop of kitsch with a knife, exposing exactly what is below. Sabina once took part in a German exhibit in which her biography in the exhibit’s catalogue identified her as a Czech refugee who suffered horribly and escaped persecution. “My enemy is kitsch, not Communism!” Sabrina yelled. After that incident, Sabina does not tell people that she is from Czechoslovakia.
Cutting through the backdrop of kitsch with a knife and exposing what is below harkens to Tomas’s profession as a surgeon and the literal and metaphorical scalpel he uses to cut and expose. Sabina doesn’t have an ethical objection to communism; she has a problem with kitsch. In parading her around as a poor refugee who endured persecution, Sabina herself becomes kitsch, which is why she begins hiding her Czech identity.
Themes
