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Part 6, Chapter 23
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
Simon lives in the country like Tomas, and a few years back, he began to send his father letters. By Simon’s third year in the country, Tomas sent him a letter asking him to visit. Simon and Tomas had a nice visit, and then a few months later, Simon found out Tomas and Tereza had been crushed by a truck. Simon heard about Sabina, his father’s former mistress, and took to sending her letters, because he badly wanted someone to look at him.
Tereza and Tomas’s death, in which they are crushed under a truck, again implies weight despite the fact that Kundera argues that life is unbearably light. Even though Kundera claims that human life is light because it does not return, he also argues that it is impossible to completely escape weight, or burden, and their death under the weight of the truck is evidence of this.
Themes
