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Part 6, Chapter 7
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
Kitsch cannot depend on anything unusual. It must be derived from commonplace images of people, like the happiness of smiling children. Kitsch leads to two tears falling from one’s eyes. The first tear acknowledges how nice it is to see children playing, and the second tear acknowledges how nice it is to be moved by such things. “It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch,” the narrator says.
Kitsch can be understood as something completely cliché and also insincere. The example here is less about the actual happiness of children and more about what the image of happy children implies—a happy and successful society. This implication likely isn’t true and is simply ignored.
Themes
