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Part 6, Chapter 6
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
Ten years later, Sabina is living in America, and a friend of a friend, who just happens to be a United States Senator, takes Sabina on a drive with his children, whom he drops off at a stadium with a skating rink in it. As the children play and laugh, the senator points at the children and, making a circle with his arms like the circle of the stadium, says, “Now, that’s what I call happiness!” The smile on his face, Sabina thinks, is just like the smiles of Communists at the May Day parade.
The circle of the senator’s arms and of the stadium, as well as his comment that the children are the epitome of happiness, again points to Kundera’s argument that happiness is a cyclical existence. The man’s smile and Sabina’s thought that it looks like the smiles at the May Day parade implies that the senator is ignoring some kind of metaphorical shit—or in Kundera’s terms, kitsch—in order to live this ideal, which suggests that all political ideologies are the same and they all involve kitsch.
Themes
