Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, written in 1984, is a story of two women, two men, a dog and their lives during the Prague Spring of Czechoslovak history in 1968 through an omnipotent narrator. However, the relationship between the two main protagonists, Tomas, a brilliant Prague surgeon and intellectual who has a tendency to womanize, and Tereza, a kind but deeply troubled photographer and former waitress as well as Tomas’ young wife, is often observed through the perspective of the characters themselves. This relationship is a strained one due to their opposing views on the topics of love, sex, and being. Their perspectives also differ when it comes to the concept of fate. This is because the novel itself is a response …show more content…
He believed that he should be in charge of his own life, and that all consequences of his decisions are his responsibility. Naturally, one of the reasons Tomas’ relationship with Tereza was uneasy is related to his rejection of fatalism. Tomas met the woman he fell in love with and eventually married on a chance encounter while he was on business trip to cure a sick doctor. The coincidence of Tomas’ room number being ‘six’ corresponding to the time Tereza gets off work is something Tomas refuses to believe is fate. Tomas reflects: “His unconscious was so cowardly that the best partner it could choose for its little comedy was this miserable provincial waitress with practically no chance at all to enter his life!” [1.4.7]. The exclamation point at the end of the sentence provides an inkling to the reader as to how much the element of ‘chance’ disturbs Tomas. In fact, the use of the word ‘chance’ is an acknowledgement of the concept that terrifies him most: eternal return. Here, Kundera uses Tomas as a mirror of sorts, reflecting the crushing sensation that any individual might feel if they were to be told that their lives have been and always will be repeated on a loop with no opportunity to change or even determine the
It is interesting to read the connections of Night, by Elie Wiesel because they include the experiences of the Holocaust from other people's’ points of views. In A Spring Morning, by Ida Fink, it is shocking that the innocence has been stripped away from the child as the speaker reveals, “Fire years old! The age for teddy bears and blocks” (Wiesel 129). This child is born innocent, she has not harmed anyone, yet she has to suffer. Reading about the Holocaust is difficult, I wonder how others had the motivation to live during it. The description of a little girl getting shot is heartbreaking as the speaker explains, “At the edge of the sidewalk lay a small, bloody rag…. He [Aron] had to keep on walking, carrying his dead child” (Wiesel 133).
Night by Elie Wiesel displays the effect of how Nazis took away the Jews’ basic rights
callous to the death of their peers, and going so far as to murder fellow
Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl describes how the hellish, cold, and inescapable setting of a march toward a Nazi concentration camp as well as the cesspool itself degrade its victims to a point of not spiritual, communal resistance but pure hopelessness and moral corruption. The story juxtaposes two Jewish captives in order to view the different effects the setting has on their humanity, or the coalescence of one’s compassion and human value; Rosa, the self-sacrificing mother of Magda, is considered the protagonist while Stella, Rosa’s envious niece, the antagonist. In their interactions with the baby Magda, Ozick frequently characterizes Rosa as humane and loving while Stella as ravenous and cold-hearted, invoking the idea that, through her love,
A story of a young boy and his father as they are stolen from their home in Transylvania and taken through the most brutal event in human history describes the setting. This boy not only survived the tragedy, but went on to produce literature, in order to better educate society on the truth of the Holocaust. In Night, the author, Elie Wiesel, uses imagery, diction, and foreshadowing to describe and define the inhumanity he experienced during the Holocaust.
The delineation of human life is perceiving existence through resolute contrasts. The difference between day and night is defined by an absolute line of division. For the Jewish culture in the twentieth century, the dissimilarity between life and death is bisected by a definitive line - the Holocaust. Accounts of life during the genocide of the Jewish culture emerged from within the considerable array of Holocaust survivors, among of which are Elie Wiesel’s Night and Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower. Both accounts of the Holocaust diverge in the main concepts in each work; Wiesel and Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their survivals. Aside from the themes, various aspects, including perception, structure, organization, and flow of arguments in each work, also contrast from one another. Although both Night and The Sunflower are recollections of the persistence of life during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal focus on different aspects of their existence during the atrocity in their corresponding works.
In Eliezer Wiesel’s novel “Night”, it depicts the life of a father and son going through the concentration camp of World War II. Both Eliezer and his father are taken from their home, where they would experience inhuman and harsh conditions in the camps. The harsh conditions caused Eliezer and his father’s relationship to change. During their time in the camps, Eliezer Wiesel and his father experience a reversal of their roles. Upon entering the concentration camps, Eliezer and his father demonstrate a normal father and son relationship.
Dehumanization Through Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations.
By means of comic illustration and parody, Art Spiegelman wrote a graphic novel about the lives of his parents, Vladek and Anja, before and during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus Volumes I and II delves into the emotional struggle he faced as a result of his father’s failure to recover from the trauma he suffered during the Holocaust. In the novel, Vladek’s inability to cope with the horrors he faced while imprisoned, along with his wife’s tragic death, causes him to become emotionally detached from his son, Art. Consequently, Vladek hinders Art’s emotional growth. However, Art overcomes the emotional trauma his father instilled in him through his writing.
In attempting to discriminate between the nature of a "literary" text and a "non-literary" text, a metaphor from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being comes to mind. Especially in considering this same novel in contrast with a novel such as Danielle Steele's Vanished, the idea of lightness versus heaviness presents itself, and with it, a new way of approaching the decipherment of any high/low dichotomy of "literariness". When the "literary" text is imagined as "heavy" and the "non-literary" as "light", an interesting illumination is cast upon the scene, and parallels emerge alongside ideas originally presented in the writings of A. Easthope and Wolfgang Iser.
The setting of these two stories emphasize, on visually showing us how the main characters are based around trying to find freedom despite the physical, mental and emotional effects of living in confinement. While on the other hand, dealing with Psychology’s ugly present day behavior showing dystopia of societies views of women during the time period they lived.
Phillip Kaufman coupled brilliant film techniques with wonderful acting to put together the film The Unbearable Lightness of Being based off of Milan Kundera's novel of the same title. The film is set in Prague during the spring of 1968. At this time the Russians are still trying to exercise their communist control over Czechoslovakia, and Prague is a city filled with political uprisings and violent outbursts from the Czech people. Within the movie and the plot, Kaufman and Kundera want to help us answer the question, "is it better to carry a heavy load on your shoulders, or cope with the unbearable lightness of being?" The answer comes to us through watching the love triangle that is built around Sabina, Tereza, and Tomas. Sabina is our example of the individual who would rather cope with the unbearable lightness of being than deal with all of the maladies of everyday life. Tereza on the other hand fully accepts the world around her, whether it is pleasant or not. The movie uses their artwork, their concern for political issues, and their relationships with Thomas to contrast Sabina and Tereza.
The themes of dominance and dehumanization are inextricably entwined throughout history and, therefore, literature. Milan Kundera addresses this concept in his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by describing the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia and its communistic influence on his characters, the interrelations of these characters, as well as its implications in a small excerpt on man's presumed dominance over other creatures. This last passage ties together the mechanization of people with that of animals, showing that the citizens of communist Czechoslovakia are expected to become no more than chattel.
When reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I was often confused about the meaning behind Tereza’s dreams. During my class discussion, I learned about the Freudian dream analysis and heard several perspectives behind Tereza’s dreams. This new information clarified why she acts the way she does.
... her true feelings with her sister, or talking to her husband or reaching out to other sources of help to address her marital repressed life, she would not have to dread living with her husband. “It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long” (Chopin 262). Her meaning for life would not have to mean death to her husband. In conclusion, her lack of self assertion, courage and strong will to address her repressed life made her look at life and death in a different perspective. When in fact there is no need to die to experience liberation while she could have lived a full life to experience it with her husband by her side.