The Unbearable Lightness of Being - It is Better to Carry a Heavy Load
"Is it better to carry a heavy load on your shoulders, or cope with the unbearable lightness of being?"
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.
Sabina represents the individual who would rather ignore reality and cope with the wonderful delusion that replaces it. Her relationship with Tomas is the first example we are presented of Sabina's inclination to avoid the truth. In the beginning of the film Tomas is shown to be what we would call a player. The very first scene of the film is of him leaving his doctoral responsibilities to join one of his nurses in the doctors' quarters to have sex. It ...
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...mas and choice to carry the burden was the better choice being as that Tomas chose to stay with her than with Sabina. In the end, when the couple is removed from the city and they live in their own little isolated world, we see the extent of their happiness. In the very last scene of the movie, Tomas and Tereza look at each other, and each confesses that they are completely happy. Their happiness is an affirmation that it is better to carry a heavy load on your shoulders than to cope with the unbearable lightness of being. All you have to do is hope that one day the load gets lighter as it did for Tomas and Tereza.
Work Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Lover's Story. Trans. Henry Michael Hiem. New York: Harper, 1984.
Work Consulted
Banerjee, Maria Nemcova. Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera. New York: Grove, 1990.
The main focus of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is on the pain of old age suffered by a man that we meet in a cafe late one night. Hemingway contrasts light and dark to show the difference between this man and the young people around him, and uses his deafness as an image of his separation from the rest of the world.
Lawyer: the word genocide, is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.
Rodriguez, Richard. "The Achievement of Desire." Petrosky, Anthony and David Bartholomae. Ways of Reading An Anthology for Writers. Boston ; New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. 516-532.
Women were not only separated by class, but also by their gender. No woman was equal to a man and didn’t matter how rich or poor they were. They were not equal to men. Women couldn’t vote own business or property and were not allowed to have custody of their children unless they had permission from their husband first. Women’s roles changed instantly because of the war. They had to pick up all the jobs that the men had no choice but to leave behind. They were expected to work and take care of their homes and children as well. Working outside the home was a challenge for these women even though the women probably appreciated being able to provide for their families. “They faced shortages of basic goods, lack of childcare and medical care, little training, and resistance from men who felt they should stay home.” (p 434)
Genocide: The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular group or nationality. When people think of this forbidding word, their mind immediately flashes to images of concentration camps and Adolf Hitler’s army raising their arms, saluting to swastikas used during the Holocaust in WWII. But what people don’t realize is that genocide is not such a rarity. Thousands, even millions of civilians die each time genocide strikes. Genocides have been committed since the beginning of humanity, but three massacres since Hitler’s reign left the world shocked again at its own cruelty.
The reconstruction period which is the period of rebuilding the United States after the civil war is said to be a time of great pain, and endless questions to the United States (Gienapp, 2012). The Civil War led to the end of slavery, and three constitutional amendments which altered the nature of the African-American rights. The Thirteenth Amendment facilitated the abolishment of slavery in all territories, and states. What is more, the Fourteenth Amendment proscribed the US from depriving male citizens’ equal rights, and protection under the law, in spite of their race or color. Likewise, the Fifteenth Amendment granted all African-American males, the right to vote. All these changes and their ratification was a vital requirement for the Southerners to be re-admitted to the Union. As much as these changes were positive steps towards racial segregation, their enforcement proved difficult as the Southerners were against them, terming them as revenge, from the Northerners. The Southerners could not hold onto the idea that, black men could enjoy the same status as white men by being allowed to vote, and hold office (Reconstruction: American’s Unfinished Revolution, 2010).
Ernest Hemingway is known as one of the best writers of our time. He has a unique writing style in which he manipulates the English language to use the minimum amount of words and maximize the impression on the reader. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is a prime example of this. Here, Ernest Hemingway uses his writing style to reinforce the theme of “Nada”. The setting is simple, the characters are plain, and the dialogues among them are short and to the point. It is with the absence of similes and metaphors that the reader is able to appreciate the work for what it is.
same for Germany. The men realized it would not be possible for them to continue their wartime
Eibling, Harold H., et al., eds. History of Our United States. 2nd edition. River Forest, Ill: Laidlaw Brothers, 1968.
“You can choose courage or you can choose comfort but you cannot have both” brene brown
“I have lived every day of my life asking myself ‘is what I’m doing reflective of who I am? Or who I want to be?’ If not...”
Before the war, some women worked in their homes caring for their children and tending after their homes and gardens. Others did do some more labor, such as working in factories, being telephone operators and in rare cases nurses. These were the normal jobs at the time and they required little to some labor. When the war started up little did they know the women’s work industry was going to be forever changed and viewed differently. In 1914 women started making guns, ammunition, and more in the munitions factories. The munitions factories were huge buildings where hundreds of women would work and sweat all day. In the factories they filled various munitions such as cartridges, bombs, screening...
In Hemingway’s “A clean Well Light Place” the story depicts the different stages of a man’s life, and he accomplishes this by controlling the point of view of the story. Rather than telling a story that is open to interpretation, he tells the audience the important facts and details of why people are acting the way that they chose. This use of third person omniscient prevents us from misconstruing the interactions between the main characters.
Wright, Walter F. "Ingress to The Heart of Darkness ." Romance and Tragedy in Joseph Conrad . New York: Russell and Russell, 1966. Pp. 143-160.
At first glance “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway is an unemotional, unfinished and simplistic narration of two waiters and an old man. However, when readers dig a little deeper for insight, they can truly see how meaningful this story actually is as Hemingway captures the source and essence of nihilistic thought, in a time of moral and religious confusion after the World War I. The post World War thinking of Hemingway and the Lost Generation in Paris was expressed and represented through his ideas, which were influenced by the ordeals of war. Due to Hemingway’s disturbing and unsettling experiences while serving in the military, he portrays the idea that all humans await an inevitable fate of eternal nothingness and everything that we value is worthless. He states that all humans will die alone and will be “in despair” about “nothing” (Hemingway 494), also that people will look for a “calm and pleasant café” (Hemingway 496) to escape from his misery. Hemingway goes on to say “[Life is] all a nothing, and a man [is] nothing too” (Hemingway, 496), undoubtedly abolishing any existence of a higher being. After observing the actions of individuals in the past three decades, Hemingway attempts to elaborate in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” that life is about gradual despair and not continual enlightenment and that we all will eventually fade into “nada” (Hemingway 497).