[the] ENGLISH-BLOG [.com]

ENG 122 (CA16) Students:

Enter your work on this text as prescribed in class.

Find some study questions (as first seen on your reading-checks) below:

· Why did Tereza’s mother hate her?

· What lesson did Tereza’s mother try to teach her about their bodies?

· What might be the significance of Tereza’s dream? What might it mean?

· On page 66, Sabina’s painting(s) are described. Discuss Sabina’s paintings. How were they supposed to be done and how did she actually do them. What does this tell us about her (hint: truth versus lies)?

· Discuss the scene with Sabina, Tereza, the bowler hat, and the photo shoot. What double purpose did the camera serve?

· Kundera tells the peculiar story of Tereza’s mother and her nine suitors (44). a.) What is a “suitor” and b.) why did she marry the ninth one?

· Tereza’s mother and stepfather had very abnormal household habits when they were all home together (47). Explain what a.) her mother and b.) stepfather did that annoyed Tereza (Each one different).

· Tereza loved books and always carried one with her (50). a.) How did she think that this made her appear to others and b.) how does the narrator say this actually made her appear?

· In Part 2 of Kundera’s novel, the narrator discusses the difference between a university graduate and an “autodidact” (58). Part of your instructions for this class is to read with a dictionary. a.) what is an “autodidact” and b.) which character is one?

· In several places of BOTH parts 1 an 2, the narrator recounts the bizarre details of Tereza’s recurring dream (59). Describe what is happening in her dream. (Do not interpret, only describe).

· Quotation: “He often stopped in for a visit, but only as a friend, never as a lover” (85). Identify WHO is the “he” spoken of here and WHOM this person went to “visit.”

· Quotation: “Once upon a time, in the early part of the century, there lived a poet. He was so old he had to be taken on walks by his amanuensis” (86). Identify WHO is telling this story and what an “amanuensis” is.

· Quotation: “Because she was a painter, she had an eye for detail and a memory for the physical characteristics of the people in Prague who had a passion for assessing others” (105). a.) Identify WHAT particular “physical” characteristic the speaker of this quotation noticed in Prague citizens who assessed others and b.) WHO she used as her most famous example (person’s job description will be okay in lieu of their name).

· Quotation: “ ‘It was there that I began to divide books into day books and night books,’ she went on. ‘Really, there are books meant for daytime reading and books that can only be read at night’ ” (112). a.) Identify WHO is speaking in this passage and b.) WHEN or WHERE this person began this peculiar habit.

· Quotation: “Marie-Anne began whistling a tune. The painter was speaking slowly and with great concentration and did not hear the whistling.” (114) a.) Identify WHO Marie-Anne is and b.) WHY she was whistling.

*********************************************

Alicia Roddenberg
Dr. Hobbs
Eng 122 CA16
03-25-09
Feeling of being trapped
From Milan Kundera’s “The unbearable lightness of being” one of the main characters is Tereza, who is very similar to the narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Though Kundera’s work is a novel and allows for Tereza to be a full round character, Gilman uses the first person point of view to allow for a lot of information to be known about her character. In both stories the Theme helps to represent the characters, if the structure of the story was different the characters would be affected differently. Both of these women in Kundera and Gilman’s works are feeling entrapment in there lives, yet they are abiding by what is requested from their partner.
Kundera’s work “The unbearable lightness of being” is arranged with an omniscient narrator and told in a non sequential order. Though at times the reader many feel lost, at the end of the story it all becomes clear. Gilman presented her story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in a completely different format. The narrator is a major participant who is telling the reader her own story. As the narrator writes of her experiences you read what she writes. This allows for a close understanding oh how the character actually feels. Kundera develops his story in a different manner. He is reluctant to tell who is narrating the story, but give great detail in most of his characters. Tereza has a background story developed as well as her emotions and feelings are shown.
Both main characters in Kundera and Gilman’s stories are woman of mid-thirties, who at this time of their lives are married. The two women are relatable because of a specific feeling they have of being trapped within the life they are currently living. Though Kundera’s Tereza never admits she is trapped in her lifestyle, it is obvious when Tomas sends her up the hill to determine her already predetermined fate. “It would have been easy to say “No, No! It wasn’t my choice at all!” But she could not imagine disappoint Tomas” (Kundera 159). Tereza is always looking to please Tomas, and rarely herself. There is a point in the story where Tereza does as Tomas does by having an affair; she is extremely hesitant until she sees the book of Sophocles’ Oedipus. “It made her feel as though Tomas had purposely left a trace, a message that her presence here was his doing” (Kundera 164). If Tereza had not felt that push from Tomas, she would never have betrayed him.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman, we do not know the name of the narrator, just that she is a woman married to a physician named John. “I sometimes fancy that in my condition, if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus- but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” (Gilman 83). The woman is concealed in the top bedroom of a colonial mansion all summer because isolation was supposed to be a rest cure. The room in which she is supposed to rest in is covered by this horrid wallpaper “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 84). She is being kept in this room by her husband, which is similar to Teresa’s story in Kundera’s work. She is in fear of being a hassle to her husband so regardless of her happiness does as she is told.
Both Tereza and the narrator in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are set to please their partners, even if what is pushed upon them isn’t in there best interest. Gilman’s narrator after being forced to stare at the wallpaper everyday begins to feel apart of it, that she came from it. The feeling of being trapped is literal and figurative in this story; she is trapped within the room as well as her own mind. Tereza from Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of being” though betrayed by the man she loves daily, knows what her life would be without him, and for that goes against her better judgment and stays with him believing that their love is strong enough. The endings to both of these stories are completely different. Gilman’s narrator locks herself in the room, where she proceeds to lose her mind alone as she waits for her husband to return, where as Kundera has Tereza and Tomas grow old together regardless of what he had done to her.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”. A Prentice Hall pocket reader Literature.
edited by Mary McAleer Balkun. Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2005. pages 82-96.
Kundera, Milan. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2008.
Roberts, Edgar V. Writing about Literature. Brief 11th ed. Saddle River, NJ: Pearson,
2006. page 155-69.

Allyn Tuff
Dr. Hobbs
English 122 CA 16
4-25-2009
Comparison of Franz from Unbearable Lightness of Being and Jackie from First Confession.
In First Confession, Frank O’ Conner writes about a boy named Jackie is faced with the stress of his first confession to the Catholic Church. In comparison, Franz from the novel Unbearable Lightness of Being is also faced with the stress of a confession, but this confession has to do with his wife. The comparison between these two is that they both have to make a life changing confession to someone of great importance to their lives, but what I want to focus on is the similar sequence of events that happens to both of them. They are terrified but determined to make this confession, and during the process they both are set back, but get back into it and complete the job.
“I was scared to death of confession” (O'Conner 235) said Jackie. Jackie has been convinced that he has to make a perfect confession or else he will go to hell. The problem is that he has sinned a lot in his seven years of life, and doesn’t know how it could ever be possible to confess the right way with all of those sins on his first time. Of course it doesn’t help when his sister says things like “Isn’t it a terrible pity you weren’t a good boy?” (O'Conner 235) Jackie is faced with an ordeal that he has to eventually overcome or else he is threatened with the eternal life of hell. When Jackie gets to the confessing booth, he is confused and didn’t know what to do. Because this happened, the Priest got upset and sent him to the end of the line to go last. This was a very big letdown for Jackie, but he sticks to the plan to confess instead of giving up. When he gets back to the booth, he found that the priest was very helpful, and he confessed very appropriately and ended up only getting three Hail Marys. Jackie completed what his goal was to do, and was happy with his outcome.
“From the time Franz met Sabina, however, Franz had been living lies” (Kundera 121) said the Milan Kundera, the author of the novel Franz is in. Franz is tired of the lie he has been telling his wife. He has been having a separate relationship with a mistress named Sabina for quite some time. Franz finds that he is not in love with his wife, but in love with Sabina. He knows he has to tell his wife about the second relationship, but he is scared that his wife will take it horribly bad and hurt herself like she threatened to do before. Franz finally comes to the conclusion that he is going to confess his secret to his wife, and stay with Sabina for the rest of his life. Once Franz finally confesses to his wife, Sabina left town never to be seen again, leaving Franz devastated. Sabina felt as though “Franz had pried open the door of their privacy.” (Kundera 124) Once this happened, Franz could have gone back to his wife and lived another lie while pretending he loved her, but he knew he wouldn’t be happy. He then made the best of the situation and found a house by himself, became a professor, and lived contently.
The comparison I would like to prove is the sequence in which both situations happened. First part of the sequence comes from Jackie and Franz both building up the courage to make the confessions. Jackie was extremely scared to make his confession because of the thought of going to hell. This took him a lot of courage to go and make that confession. This is similar to the courage it took for Franz to confess his second lover to his wife. He, like Jackie, was scared of a bad consequence, and this was his wife hurting herself. The second part of the sequence comes from the set down, or “the fall.” When Franz finally confessed to his wife, he found that Sabina had packed up and left town forever. This is similar to Jackie and when he went to the confession booth, messed up, and made the priest send him to the back of the line. Both situations were very big let downs for the two of them. The third similarity to their sequences is overcoming their let downs. When Jackie was sent to the back of the line he could have gave up, but her didn’t. He went back into the booth and ended up making his confession very good. This is similar to Franz because Franz could have easily gone back to his wife and lived the lie, but he decided to move out and start a new life as a professor and became content. Both of them ended up reaching their goals and living joyously.
Franz and Jackie are two very different characters. Some people probably would find no similarities between the two of them at all, but that is the beauty of literature. When you have stories to go along with characters, you can still find similarities between them. In this case it was by the sequence that they came about reaching their goals. They both faced a life changing confession, got set back while doing so, but overcame that setback and reached their goal happily.

Works Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York City, New York: Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1984.
O'Conner, Frank. "First Confession." Roberts, Eger V. Writing About Literature. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006. 233-238.

Sonia Perez
Dr. Lee Hobbs
Academic Writing 2 Eng122 CA16
31 March 2009

Unexpected Love

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and “The Bear” by Anton
Chekhov, the authors develop the theme,unexpected love, throughout the stories. Kundera writes about Tomas and Tereza and Chekhov writes about Mrs. Popov and Smirnov. The characters and the situations they go through show how love can occur unexpectedly. Tomas and Smirnov from each work has had some bad experiences with women, but they have different reactions.
Each author addresses the obstacles that the characters face because they have fallen in
love. One character that Kundera writes about is Tomas, who is a doctor and is divorced from
his first wife. Because of the divorce, Tomas is afraid of women but still desires them, and he
has many mistresses. On the other hand, in “The Bear”, Smirnov hates women, but he too had many women. In the beginning, he just uses the women, and when he starts to fall in love with them, the women cheat on him. So Smirnov hates them and wants nothing to do with women in the past. Both of these characters has faced rejection by women, but they have different reactions to them.

In both of these works, the characters fall in love unexpectantly. Tereza and Tomas meet at the restaurant where Tereza is a waitress. She leaves Prague and goes to Tomas’s flat. “They made love the day she arrived. That night she came down with a fever and stayed a whole week in his flat with the flu” (Kundera 6). Tomas is cautious of Tereza since no woman stays in his flat, and he takes care of her. During this time, Tomas had compassion for Tereza, which turn into love and he does not know if he wants her in his life. In contrast, Chekhov’s characters meet because Mrs. Popov’s deceased husband owes money to Smirnov. Smirnov is rude to Mrs. Popov since he does not want any woman into his life. They get into a heated discussion in which Mrs. Popov insults him. He challenges her to a duel, and she accepts and gets the pistols. “…she accepted my challenge! To tell the truth, it was the first time in my life I’ve seen a woman like that…” (Chekhov 267). Since Mrs. Popov shows that she is not like the other women it leads to Smirnov to fall in love with her. All of the characters fall in love because of a situation, yet their situations are different. Because of Tomas and Smirnov are
rejected by women, they had different situations of how they fall in love. The Unbearable Lightness of Being and “The Bear” are two works in which one of the themes is unexpected love. Tomas and Smirnov’s experiences, it is difficult for these two characters to fall in love. Chekhov and Kundera have some general ideas about unexpected love and many of their ideas are the same. Yet, both authors had different ideas about situations that bring love to people and people to love.
Works Citied
Chekhov, Anton. “The Bear”. Writing About Literature by Edgar V. Roberts. Brief 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2006. 261-69.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. 6-12.

John Winans
Eng 122
Dr. Hobbs
26March2009
Born to be Lucky, or not
It was at banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. (Twain, 242) It is in this starting line of the story Luck by Mark Twain that introduces the idea of naming some prestigious characters and their comparisons. A certain Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, a name that has been thrown around several thousand times in the life of the narrator to date is a major interest and honorary member of the banquet. Unlike Thomas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera who worked hard to earn a name for himself and having to protect his birth name was a complicated soul. One fell into situations governed by luck as an outcome and the other was just lucky to fall into certain situations. Both were human and had purpose.
In the military, on the field of battle, sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, linked by the maleness that they were born with yet affiliated by the uniforms they wore. In the wisdom of the reverend, in Luck, the hero is a fool, a secret revealed just in time for honorary mention. The narrator explains: “This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater. (Twain, 243) To be mentioned with great names in history such as these would be more than the average man could endear. Even Caesar would be proud, but these names lived up to them with the acts of heroism committed on behalf of others, whereas the honored banquet guest was at the right place at the right time, chalk it up to luck.
Thomas on the other hand lives by the “Es muss sein” motif of Beethoven. To interpret this would mean “it must be”, a motif Thomas was destined to stick with. Then again, the metaphysical thesis of Parmenides’ philosophy would have it positive going to negative not light going to heavy. “It is my feeling that Thomas had long been secretly irritated by the stern, aggressive, solemn “Es muss sein!” and that he harbored a deep desire to follow the spirit of Parmenides and make heavy go to light.”(Kundera, 210). Thomas had something to prove, he had something to live for something that had to be said, he used his profession as his means to do this, his name to say what had to be said, he did what had to be done. He worked with the human body as a doctor and even studied the brain, this led him to the individualities between not only men and women but among humans and the decisions that affects life.
Scoresby could not tell the truth, Thomas could not lie. “The “tell the truth!” imperative drummed into us by our mamas and papas functions so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman during an interrogation.” (Kundera, 201). Ultimately, a lie will be confronted with the truth and others will know the true self. As for Thomas and Scoresby, they’re peers may be persuaded to believe what they hear and see but the inner self, the “I”, will be revealed within time, after all in the words of Beethoven, “Es muss sein”.

Works Cited
Twain, Mark. “Luck”. Edgar V. Roberts. Writing About Literature. Brief 11th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2005. 242-45.
Kundera, Milan. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” First Olive Edition, 2008 New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022. Olive Editions, 2008.

Brittany Thunberg
Dr. Hobbs
Academic Writing II CA16
29 March 2009
“The story of an Hour” vs. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Short story “The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin, and novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera are two works that differ greatly. Each work is written in its own unique way and holds its own special characters and plot line as well. However one aspect that seems to stand out as being similar between these two works is their protagonist. The main character in both of these stories is a woman who is in an unhappy marriage.
Mrs. Mallard is the protagonist in “The Story of an Hour.” One of the main conflicts within this short story is the fact that Mrs. Mallard finds out her husband has been killed in a tragic accident. “She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” (Chopin 205) The reader would assume that Mrs. Mallard would be distraught about her husband’s death but she is in fact overjoyed with the fact that her husband has passed. At this point in this short story the reader can assume that Mrs. Mallard is in an unhappy marriage. The fact that Mrs. Mallard is happy that her husband is dead, sends up a red flag to reader’s that her reaction is not normal and she must be suffering in an unhappy marriage.
In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, one of the main characters named Tereza is in an unhappy marriage as well. Tereza is faced with the problem of infidelity throughout almost her entire marriage. “Each time he lay down next to his wife in that bed he thought of his mistress.” (Kundera 88) Although Tereza is aware of her husband’s infidelities committed against her, she stays in the marriage anyway. Tereza, although aware that her husband is cheating on her, stays within the marriage because she wants keep her husband close to her out of fear. The reader can sense Tereza’s love for her husband even through hard times.
Mrs. Mallard and Tereza have similarities; they also have differences as well. Although they are both clearly in unhappy marriages the way that they feel toward their husbands are different. Although Tereza is angered by her husband’s infidelities she never seems to readers that she hates her husband. Although readers can tell that Tereza is unhappy, she never wishes harm against her husband Tomas, and she always shows him respect. This is different from Mrs. Mallard because her hatred for her husband is apparent to readers when she is not fazed in the least by her husband’s death but instead strangely excited. “She was drinking in a very elixer of life through that open window.” (Chopin 206) The protagonist in each work is in an extremely similar situation, however their feelings toward their situations as well as their actions convey to reader’s their significant differences in personality.

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.”Writing about Literature by Edgar V. Roberts. Brief 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson 2006. 205-06.)
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008.

Chris Collier
Academic Writing II CA 16
Dr. Hobbs
March 25, 2009
The Similarities and differences of Eddie and Tomas; Two Primary Male Characters of Two Works of Literature
There are many differences between Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love”. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is a novel, and “Fool for Love” is a drama for example. Kundera’s novel is set in Eastern Europe, while Shepard’s play is set in the Western U.S. The cultural backgrounds of both works vastly differ accordingly due to their locations as well. Yet apart from these superficial differences, Shepard’s Eddie, and Kundera’s Tomas share one strong similarity: their twisted sense of romantic loyalty.
In Kundera’s novel, Tomas sleeps with over one-hundred women. In Sam Shepard’s play, Eddie sleeps with one or more women, however at their core they both love the women they are involved with romantically. To each man, being loyal is not a physical bond or obligation, but a deeper more mental and emotional connection and linkage. Eddie and Tomas both were separated from the woman they love at one point or other in the story, yet both of them either returned to or ventured to find the woman he loved. Both of these men’s definition of loyalty is quite different than the women they love. May and Tereza have more of the traditional sense, while Eddie and Tomas see loyalty as being there for a woman, not neccasarily being monogamous.
The differences only become apparent in either man’s thinking when it becomes apparent the actual necessity of the women in their lives. Eddie is always abandoning May, leaving her to fend for herself. He only seems to want May when he needs her, not when she needs him, but that is only an aspect of his twisted loyalty. Eddie’s loyalty is more that of a prisoner to his own lust than to love. Tomas on the other hand, needs Tereza because he is insecure. He needs Tereza to be around him, to make a certain part of his personality and mind be complete, he also feels sorry for Tereza at some point or other throughout the book. His loyalty though, could also be seen from a prisoner’s perspective, that he is chained to her weak emotions and personality.
While each of the men’s reasons for being loyal may be different, their definitions of loyalty are very much the same. Each man has a sense that he should be with the woman he loves. Although this sense of love does not include the same passion that they feel for other women, as said before, their definition of love depends on the feelings and emotions they have for the women. The bond and the link that they cannot escape, much like a prisoner, and finally the idea that they are allowed to have physical relations with other women so long that the one they love remains there for them.

hello...loved your blog. I'm am English Lecturer and research scholar from India. Just added your blog rss to my blog. will visit often..thanks.

@Alicia Roddenberg:
Quite a contemplated comparison. I enjoyed reading Kundera's The Unbearable lightness of being, but now i think i must read Gilman as well. Nietzsche's idea of eternal return where an individual is trapped in the cycle and Kundera's perspective to it ...is very well depicted in this review.

I'll get back to other entries and reviews of this work once i get time. Thanks.

-------------------------

The LATE 20th Century and Milan Kundera's _The Unbearable Lightness of Being_

ENG 226 (Honors) Students ONLY:

This is the entry we'll be using for our Late 20th Century and Kundera discussions and homework assignments (do not post items due here elsewhere or you may not receive credit!). To complete course assignments, please follow the instructions you were given in class.

1. Your entry tickets should FIRST be submitted to turnitin.com and THEN here in the comment box below. Your entry tickets should have the question and the answer (I asked that you submit a version of the questions without answers as a hardcopy in class).

2. Your reading response--directed/based on a topic you selected from a list distributed in class--should also be submitted to turnitin.com and THEN here in the comment box below.

I have to "approve" all comments so you won't see it immediately after posting. After hitting submit, you should see a screen that confirms this.

Below, please enter your work on this text as prescribed in class.

Before we get into the history depicted in the novel, perhaps you would like to refresh your memory with some of the recurring concepts suggested by Kundera. One of these is Nietzsche' (1844-1900) idea of the "Eternal Return" (or) "Recurrence."

This is a 4.5 minute video about Nietzsche's "Eternal Return" concept: "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again!" (from: Peter Pan)

Here is another artistic rendering/interpretation of the "Eternal Recurrence" notion.

Also important to the story is Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. If you haven't read this classic example of Russian Literature, here are trailers to a few of the many filmed adaptations that have been made of Anna Karenina over the years:

This verson is a Spanish made film from 1997

A very fast overview of the late 20th century (until the 1980s) as performed by Billy Joel in "We Didn't Start the Fire."

A five-minute summary of the 1968 Invasion of Prague with interviews of eyewitnesses.

A one and 1/2 minute slideshow of pictures and videos from the Battle of Prague (1968). As you look at these, think of the pictures that Tereza took in Kundera's novel.

"World remembers Prague Spring." A five-minute, reflective video reportage by RT News (Russia).
_____________________________________

To see other English-Blog entries on the subject of Literature, please click HERE.

Mary Strand
Dr. Hobbs
ENG 226
April 12, 2010

Entry Ticket

If Thomas was an existentialist, what would his philosophy of life be?

Thomas is a pleasure seeking man and with his hedonistic ways, the question of “why” he is living and what it means, would probably be easy for him to answer, in jest, but not in seriousness. I believe his hasty “why” would consist of success in business and in “erotic friendships”; which were the soul of his happiness. What life means, well I think he would say that life is short, so why not make it sweet.
The narrator makes known that Thomas could acquire any woman he wished, and he did so freely. This was the ultimate pleasure that Thomas could control, and go about it with no strings attached. Until he met Tereza… For some reason he grew attached to her, and had no immunity to the powerful force she had over him. After meeting her he was not sure what he wanted out of life, or his relationships. On page 8, Kundera writes that Thomas felt as though he was not a real man, because he felt he could not live without her, and did not know how to control or understand that feeling. A hedonistic man, like himself was not used to an uncontrollable desire that changed his reckless ways. The three three’s he lived by were totally disrupted when Tereza came into his life and his life and existence became controversial because of it.
Thomas’ philosophy of life does not ever seem to change throughout the story. He constantly struggles to figure out what it is that wants in and out of life… but who does not? I do not condemn him for his unsure attitude, but living a weightless life can leave a person lost and confused, as Thomas was.

Katie Ganning
Dr. B. L. Hobbs
ENG226: Survey of World Literature II
13 April 2010
You Cannot Have One Without the Other
1. Why do you think Milan Kundera names certain chapters with the opposite meaning of one another? Ex. Soul and Body?

As much as people try and attempt to separate body and soul or weight and lightness, one needs both in order to makes certain events in life work. When he asks the question of weight and lightness and which one is better to live, one is able to realize that you cannot have one without the other.
When Tereza left Tomas, she felt as if she was “weighing” him down which caused him to act in the manner he did with other women. “She was weighing him down and would do so no longer.” (Kundera 28) At first Tomas felt as if he was light again, living the way he always wanted to, but as he tried to forget their relationship, the lightness he believed he attained still gave him the weight he longed to move away from.

2. How does Karenin’s relationship to Mefisto relate to Tomas and Tereza’s?

When Karenin first met Mefisto, he was questionable about the pig, “But he soon made friends with him, even to the point of preferring him to the village dogs.” (284) Similar to Karenin’s feelings for Mefisto, Tomas acted about Tereza. Although he could not leave Tereza because of their marriage and living arrangements, he used other tactics of meeting other women and eventually realized that he did truly love her and her to him. As much as Tomas tried to make himself believe he needed other women to be happy, the type that he felt he should be with, he eventually realized it may not always be the one you want to be with, but the one you are meant to be with. Love is not always created over night, but it can be learned and tested, the way he would always leave her made Tomas believe she would leave him, which she did eventually, but she knew they were meant to be together and it clearly was going to take him longer than it took her to realize.
 
Works Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper Perennial, 1999.

Antonette Boynes
HON ENG 226
Dr. Hobbs
04-03-2010
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Entry Ticket #6

Q1) On page 8 of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the statement is made that “If we only have one life to live, we might as well not live at all.” At the ending of the previous paragraph, it is said that our life is an outline with no picture, implying that there is no significance. Is this true? What other point of view can be drawn these statements?
A1) No, this is not true. I have always heard the saying “Only one life to live, so live it up,” so reading that having one life means that it is not significant, seems very odd. When there is only one of something it shows uniqueness, exclusiveness, and distinctiveness, and rarity. Having more than one of something shows commonness and unimportance. I like to think of life as a limited edition because there is only one so make it as valuable as possible. If we were able to practice and have a sketch of our lives, in some instances it would be better because then we could make better decisions, but on the contrary, the fact that we only have one means that we should be more cautious and make wise decisions from the start and use every experience as a learning tool to build a better life.

Patricia Pothier
Survey of World Lit
Dr. Hobbs
April 12, 2010

1. Does Milan Kundera provide a definitive answer to the philosophical lightness versus weight discussion?
a. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera examines the role in which lightness and weight as a dichotomy plays in the lives of his characters. Kundera paints a paradox that is suggested to be unanswerable. Kundera opens the novel with a brief description of the teachings of Nietzsche. Discussing the idea of eternal return ad infinitum, he calls it a heavy burden. He states “But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?” (Kundera 5). It is my opinion that Kundera does not specify whether it is best to live in a world of lightness or weight not because he believes the question is unanswerable, but because it is a question that is subject to the separate needs of individuals. That is, that there is not a sufficient answer that applies to everyone. I do believe Kundera disagrees with Nietzsche. In his novel he uses his characters to allow readers to make their own decision on the issue. By showing the burdens, desires, and fears of four much different characters, Kundera makes it easier for the reader to decide whether lightness or weight is better.
2. Why is it that Tomas insists on living his light-hearted bachelor life?
a. After meeting Teresa in a café, Tomas imagines that he could possibly be in love with her when she falls ill. Unfortunately in the past Tomas was married before and it ended terribly. He had a son with his ex-wife but when they divorced he lost custody of his son. It can be suggested that this incident has scarred Tomas to the point where he refuses to allow love to enter his life again. It became a priority for Tomas to keep his women at a certain distance so when Teresa shows up with a suitcase, he begins to worry. Teresa does love Tomas and I believe that a small part of him cares for her but he could never reciprocate her feelings.

Dana Jennings
Dr. Hobbs
ENG-226
13-4-10

Entry Ticket: Kundera

Tomas is clearly an anti-hero in true postmodernist fashion; do you believe there are any attributes of his that may redeem him?

A. No. Through the first half of the book, Tomas has done nothing that would warrant our sympathy. It is possible that he could have an epiphany and become a good man, but I do not foresee that.

Should we feel empathy for a character, i.e. Tereza or Sabina, that finds herself in a “relationship” with Tomas?

A. The women in this novel have shown little or no imagination on changing their circumstances. Tereza is nearly mute, even in marriage to Tomas, and Sabina rebels, but only in petty ways, such as stealing his sock and forcing him to walk home with a woman’s stocking on. Their lack of confrontation enables Tomas’ horrid behavior.

Muriel Clemens
Dr. B. Lee Hobbs
ENG 226 Survey of English Literature II (Honors)
Reading Response 7

“A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words”
“The Old Church in Amsterdam”
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Kundera uses “A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words” to show the gulf between Franz and Sabina. Each one sees the world differently: one is light and one is dark. Example: in “The Old Church in Amsterdam,” Franz sees the old Gothic cathedral as “the Grand March of History” (117). The church was once a place of worship where large numbers of people would gather. But time has moved on and the grand church has been striped of everything that made it holy. Franz sees only beauty in what he deems as a cleansing and uses this as a metaphor for his life. The example Franz uses is “Hercules’ broom,” because everything has been swept away. (118). Franz saw Light.
Sabina, whose life had been more difficult than Franz’s, saw the empty church in a totally different light. She saw this empty church as ugly. She had once gone to a village church to escape the student brigade and what she found was a different kind of beauty. To her, this little church was beautiful because it was not the ugly construction site where she spent her days. “The mass was beautiful because it appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed” (119). This discovery had a profound affect on her. “From that time on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade” (119). What Sabina finds is Darkness.
Kundera uses his list of “Misunderstood Words” as a way of showing how each character sees life and how they differ. You cannot find “Misunderstood Words” in the dictionary, and you certainly could not find “The Old Church in Amsterdam.” Kundera wants us to see the Light and the Dark and his dictionary is the most logical way to do this. Not that logic plays a part in this story.
Reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a learning experience. The book could have been written any number of ways, but Kundera was writing from a Postmodern perspective, which as it turns out, gave the reader a wonderful way to look at life. We saw how each person saw their lives and how that vision affected their lives. What a wonderful way to write.

Works Cited
Kundera, Milan, and Michael Henry Heim. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008. Print.

Muriel Clemens
Dr. B. Lee Hobbs
ENG 226 Survey of English Literature II (Honors)
April 13, 2010
Entry Ticket #6

Entry Ticket 6
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
By
Milan Kundera

Question:
Who was Karenin and what did he symbolize?

Answer:
Karenin was Tereza and Tomas’s dog. He is the basis for a philosophical question; what is “True human goodness?” “True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it” (313).

Works Cited
Kundera, Milan, and Michael Henry Heim. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008. Print

Diana Parizon
English 226 - Honors
Dr. Hobbs
15 January 2010
Entry-Ticket # 6 Lightness of Being

Question: Thomas and Tereza are opposites. What experiences did they undergo before they met and how different are they after they depart?

Answer: Tomas lives a happy single life without any responsibilities. He developed his own philosophy about relationships, “Either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart” (Kundera 12). The reason for this theory about the treatment of woman is because; even though, he desired them, he feared women. He learned to love freedom after his failed marriage lasted only two years; however, during this time their son was born, who after the divorce was kept by the mother while Tomas needed to pay support. He also was allowed to visit his son but every time he planned to go, his ex-wife found always an excuse to cancel the meeting. It went so far that Tomas could only see his son when he brought expensive gifts for his ex-wife. Of course, after time Tomas got tired of fulfilling her demands and quit visiting his son and paying child support. It is not mentioned what caused the marriage to fail; however, we can assume she was too ‘heavy’ for him to carry. When they married and got a child, the weight on Tomas’s shoulder was pushing him down until finally he was tired and wanted to be free. Since then, he feared to be drawn again in this “cage” and lives a life of lightness. He even found his likeness in Sabina who clearly does not like weight on her shoulder. Tereza, on the other hand, is more the opposite from Tomas. She grew up surrounded with people who valued lightness in life. She learned from childhood how without weight life has no meaning. Because of her experience at home, she wanted to live a life with values unlike her mother who was not ashamed to expose her body, or her stepfather who clearly had no shame of using the toilet while she bathed. Tereza’s mother put guilt in her mind for having her (almost like Tomas’s wife, who put weight on his shoulder).

Work Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael H. Heim. New York:
Harperperennial Modern Classics, 1984.

Diana Parizon
Dr. Hobbs
English 226 – Honors
15. April 2010
Fidelity and Betrayal

Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being not only differentiates lightness and weight but also the concept of fidelity and betrayal. Those terms are very important to explore for understanding the main characters. While Tereza and Franz value fidelity, Tomas and Sabina definitely feel more comfortable with betrayal to a certain degree. As I learned from the beginning of the story, Tomas lives a life of freedom, but he is not really betraying anyone because his lovers knew there were no strings attached to their relationship. However, when he meets Tereza (who values fidelity) Tomas gets a feeling of betrayal every time he meets up with Sabina. It got obvious for Sabina because he started checking the time during their intercourse.
On the other hand, Sabina has a different experience with betrayal. Her first betrayal was against her father. Her father did not allow her to love a boy that she fell in love with. He only loved art and influenced his daughter, but Sabina never felt freedom around her father. So, when she got the chance she betrayed him by going to Prague, as Kundera defines, “Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown” (Kundera 91). Kundera defines the words by using the characters as an example of how the term dominates their lives. However, my understanding of betrayal is that one knows the consequences of it if one betrays someone. If someone betrays his partner, they know the relationship will never be the same. But Kundera is right that if changes happen a new chapter begins for the person and the person will undergo new experiences. Unfortunately, this betrayal did not appease her in any way because even in Prague she had no freedom because of Communism. Kundera even stated that Communism was simply a replacement of her father. Sabina first embraced betrayal as the key to freedom, but instead it drew her to more betrayal. Sabina got married to a second-rate actor, which was considered of breaking the ranks. But again, she later betrayed her husband by leaving him. She betrayed her betrayal over and over again, which takes her further away from her original betrayal. So what is the point of betrayal if there is no satisfaction to be gained? Only more deceit from the betrayal is being created. Fidelity carries weight for Sabina and Tomas. Fidelity actually reminded Sabina of her father who was loyal to his paintings. She never really liked fidelity for these reason but what she does not realize that betrayal is her fidelity – she shows loyalty to it since her first betrayal.

Work Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael H. Heim. New York:
Harperperennial Modern Classics, 1984.

Erin Van Eepoel Van Eepoel 1
Dr. Hobbs
April-13-2010

Q) Why would Tereza leave her entire life for a man she did not know?
A) Tereza came to Tomas on a whim. Not well thought through but she left her whole life just because of a chance series of events that she called fate. This shows that she is ruled heavily by her emotions and not her intelligence. Tereza’s choice made sense to her because she could rationalize it just enough to make it possible to leave her mother and stepfather with no warning. She was not an intelligent college graduate, Tereza was just a well read young woman guided by the fantasy of the very books that she adored. Instead of the rational calculated decisions of a college graduate she allowed her rationale to be based on what she chose to learn through her favorite books.

Q) Why did Sebina never want to settle down with one man?
A) Sebina spent her life trying to live outside the accepted boundaries for a woman. Ever since she was young she felt the need to rebel against her father who would not let her experience her first love at fourteen. This is just one example of how Sebina felt her father repressed her with his ideals that were so different from her own. For Sebina settling down with one man was just trapping herself even more. She felt so trapped by her father that she wanted to make sure she had nobody controlling her, which might have also played into her choice to be an artist, with no clear boss or guidelines.
Erin Van Eepoel Van Eepoel 2
Dr. Hobbs
April-13-2010

Q) Why would Tereza leave her entire life for a man she did not know?

Q) Why did Sebina never want to settle down with one man?

Branka Trivanovic


ENG 226 [HONORS]


Due April 14, 2010


Entry Ticket #6


Q. 1) How did Tereza’s relationship with her mother influence her adult life?


A. 1) As evident by her disturbing, reoccurring dream, Tereza’s relationship with her mother shaped her to be a somewhat screwed up individual. She looks at herself in the mirror, not out of vanity but because she is almost desperately trying to figure out who she really is. She sees her mother’s features in the mirror and is distraught by it because she does not consider herself to be anything like her mother. In fact, as a younger woman she wanted nothing more than to run away from her mom. When she does finally escape from her mother’s “prison”, she finds herself in a prison yet again, but this time with Tomas. In her nightmare, she is walking naked around a pool, doing knee-bends for Tomas along with other women. They are all identical in a way and then reminds her of the times when he mother would walk around naked in their home, exposing herself to the neighbors by not covering the windows. Tereza fights in her dream to not be like all the other women—to not end up dead and in a hearse. The other dead women tell her that they are all the same and that they are all going to the same place. This is comparable to Tereza’s mother telling her that she need not be ashamed of a naked body. On page 45, Tereza is chastised by her mother because Tereza locked the door when she was in the bath. She did not want her stepfather going to the bathroom at the same time that she was in there. Her mother got angry at her asking her, “Who do you think you are, anyway? Do you think he’s going to bit off a piece of your beauty?” These events lead to her not having a healthy relationship with her body. When she takes naked pictures of Sabina, she finds herself hesitant of stripping off her clothes when Sabina tells her too.


Q. 2) Despite knowing about his infidelities, Tereza stuck by Tomas until the day that they died. How do you feel about this? Had you been in her position, what would you have done?


A. 2) I find that Tereza was both brave and foolish for choosing to stay with him. In Part Two of the book when she left Switzerland to go back to Prague, my initial thought was, ”Yes!” but realistically I figured that she would go back to him. Although it was Tomas who went back to Tereza, she nonetheless accepted him back into her life. I feel that it is a common mistake that women who are being cheated on make. The man shows a little remorse for their actions and the woman’s faith in them is renewed, only to be broken yet again. I’ve never been married or cheated on (that I know of), but if I was in a relationship with someone like Tomas, it would not last long. I think there is a fine line between love and a sense of duty I guess you could say. She was walking more along the line of the duty. She was so focused on “fortuity” that she was blinded to what was really happening. Maybe one day I will eat my words and I will marry a womanizer but until then I really can’t relate to Tereza. I don’t feel sorry for her because she made a choice to stay with him. She could have easily just left him behind but I think that the ideas that she carried in her mind, such as the vertigo, were the forces that drove her to stick it out with him.

Antonette Boynes
HON ENG 226
Dr. Hobbs
04-03-2010
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Entry Ticket #6

Q1) On page 8 of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the statement is made that “If we only have one life to live, we might as well not live at all.” At the ending of the previous paragraph, it is said that our life is an outline with no picture, implying that there is no significance. Is this true? What other point of view can be drawn these statements?
A1) No, this is not true. I have always heard the saying “Only one life to live, so live it up,” so reading that having one life means that it is not significant, seems very odd. When there is only one of something it shows uniqueness, exclusiveness, and distinctiveness, and rarity. Having more than one of something shows commonness and unimportance. I like to think of life as a limited edition because there is only one so make it as valuable as possible. If we were able to practice and have a sketch of our lives, in some instances it would be better because then we could make better decisions, but on the contrary, the fact that we only have one means that we should be more cautious and make wise decisions from the start and use every experience as a learning tool to build a better life.

Mary Strand
ENG226
Dr. Hobbs
April 19, 2010

“Sabina’s Country”

Kundera considers Sabina’s Country “misunderstood” words in his text. The country that Sabina is from is not just background information that may or may not help the reader picture her character, but it is information about her that will shape her into a mysterious and intriguing figure. Kundera wants the reader to respect and admire Sabina for the weight she carries from her time spent in her homeland. But he also wants the reader to realize why it is that Sabina longs for the lightness of life that she sees in Franz’s life.

Sabina envied Franz for the life he had, where he could dedicate himself to his writing and not worry about things interrupting his creative process. In the beginning of her artistic journey, she was interrupted by the jurisdiction of her superiors in her country, and she could not express the themes in her paintings, that she desired. The weight she carries because of the persecution and imprisonment, and other “ugly” words, is not something that Sabina values. She tells Franz, “Conflict, drama, and tragedy don’t mean a thing; there was nothing inherently valuable in them, nothing deserving respect or admiration” (102-103). Franz sees these “ugly” words as events that should evoke emotions and revelations, as Sabina had done for him.

Sabina’s country is a place that she longed to be freed from, and place that Franz longed to experience. Franz says to Sabina, “That’s why one banned book in your former country means infinitely more than the billions of words spewed out by our universities” (103). The terrible things that Sabina experienced in her country are things that Franz cannot fathom. He has been fortunate to not have regulations put on his work and he had the “peace and quiet to devote himself to it” (103). This is why Sabina was so beautiful to him; she was unique and very different from him.

In this section of Kundera’s novel, I believe a very clear picture of both Sabina and Franz is created for the reader. The way in which he went about describing Sabina and Franz’s feelings towards “Sabina’s Country”, and the conflicts she experienced there, shows Sabina as being somewhat apathetic towards her past. But, her apathy could give the reader the impression that it honestly does not matter to her, when in fact at some point her past had to have made a significant impact on her. This supports the way in which she currently lives out her artistic and weightless lifestyle. Franz needs more to his life; he wants a more daring and risk filled life. This he finds in Sabina, and looks to her former life and country to find the weight that he wishes he knew.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper & Row 1984.

Tommy Tagliavia 1
Dr. Hobbs
English Honors Eng 226
20 April 2010
Recurrence in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera
In Kunderas novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera uses Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return and recurrence as a concept of motif. Kundera uses the concept as the whole point of the novel, he has it to where the ladies keep going back to Tomas when he cheats on Tereza and yet she still stays with him. Nietzsche’s concept is that everything that we have done recurs itself infinite times.
One way Kundera shows how this concept is used is by the way Tereza is with Tomas. Tereza knows about the affairs Tomas has, especially with Sabina, yet she still stays with him. The recurrence in this, besides all the affairs, is that Tomas and Tereza move to Switzerland to start over on their relationship. However, shortly after the move Sabina moves there as well and the affairs between her and Tomas recur. Once Tereza found out about this she moved back to Prague which of course Tomas followed. To me it seems like wherever they move and whatever Tomas does, she will always take him back. Throughout the relationship difficulties they have, it just seems like whatever happens will continue to happen over and over. Nietzsche says that whatever happens in life recurs to the infinitum and that is what seems to be happening with Tomas and Tereza. Even at the end of the novel when Tereza brings that rabbit that is Tomas back home to Prague as if he was still with her, it is like a recurrence of them being together.

2
Recurrence also occurs in this novel throughout couples. The way it brought out is that cheating on your spouse then feeling terrible for it and trying to change your ways, happens frequently. Franz had sexual affairs with a lady called Sabina for nine months, then the whole Tomas and Tereza situation it is just a repeating occurrence throughout the book. Sexual affairs throughout the book show recurrence in many ways. The first way of recurrence is how the ladies are always getting the affair to begin with. Tereza did however cheat on Tomas with an engineer but she did that to get back and over Tomas. After the recurrence the man would always fess up and tell the woman about it. Throughout all of these situations the man always was the one leading the affair and then going back to the ladies to be forgiven.

Work Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1984.

Living in Truth
Living in truth means different things to different people. For most people it simply means being honest with yourself and other people, but sometimes it goes deeper.
To Sabina it meant keeping her life private. For Sabina she could only be truly honest when nobody was watching and judging her life. She felt as though when people know they are being watched they fake how they truly act and live in a lie. This is why she never kept a normal relationship. All her lovers were affairs and she hid them well. People tend to worry about what others think more than they should and that’s causes them to put on a front and lie to themselves and others.
Franz on the other hand believed that dividing yourself into public and private lives was the source of all lies. Franz believed to live in truth meant being the same in public and private “living in a glass house” so everyone could see in. This is why he eventually broke down and told his wife about his affair with Sabina. When Franz told her he got an unusual response, she simply said “Yes, I think it’s time I knew about it.” As he flew off to Rome with his mistress Franz felt as though he was finally living in truth.
These two opposite views kept Sabina and Franz at odds, especially after she found out his wife knew. Sabina felt like he had let his wife inside Sabina’s private life where she did not belong. Sabina was frustrated with the fact that she had now become a rival for a woman who she did not even see as a threat. Eventually Franz’s admittance leads to the separation of Franz and his wife Marie-Claude. Sabina quickly takes her place in Franz’s life. Sebina has never been

the type of woman to settle down with one man permanently. After just a short while she realizes she is not happy being settled in with Franz. The longer she stayed with him the more she wanted to destroy him. He was too good of a man for her to just keep hurting him. One day Sabina decided that it was not fair to him at all. She needed to leave and let him go back with his wife.
Living in truth meant something different to each person but in the end the differences in opinion destroyed the relationship. The view of truth is very important in any relationship and must match up in order for the relationship to be a success.

Branka Trivanovic


ENG 226 [HONORS]


Dr. B. Lee Hobbs


Due April 20, 2010




Reading Response




In Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being, he defines some common place words in a way that differ from the “normal” definition. Franz’s opinion of the “misunderstood” words are more like the dictionary definitions while Sabina has a more interesting take on them.

When talking about Bohemian cemeteries, Sabina’s character compares them to gardens. To her a cemetery is not a “dump of stones and bones” like it is to Franz. She sees it as a children’s ball because, “the dead are as innocent as children” in her opinion. Whenever she feels down she gets in her car and drives to a cemetery. There she feels like no matter what is happening in the world, “peace always reigns in the cemetery” (104) which I find to be an ironic statement. Peace in a cemetery comes from the silence… the silence is initiated by the fact that the people who reside there are dead. They have no way of speaking, thus, there can be nothing other than peace.

Although he could have chosen any words to “clarify” this part of his novel, I think that Kundera chose the words such as “cemetery” to show just how different two people can be. The only thing that Sabina and Franz shared was a bed. They carried separate ideologies about most of life. They couldn’t even agree on something as universal as a cemetery. Sabina indulged in visiting while Franz saw nothing special in them. He did not seem like the type to visit just for the fun of it. I think that the only time he planned on spending time in one is when he is dead and gone like all of the other occupants there.

Overall I enjoyed the book. I think that it drew a lot of important life questions to light—no pun intended. I was both annoyed and fond of Tereza’s willingness to stick by Tomas all the while he was being promiscuous and sleeping around with other women behind her back. I figured that other than her fear of not having anyone if Tomas left her, I think that maybe deep down Tereza knew that eventually he’d come back to her and be only hers. They lived up to the traditional marriage vows of “till death do you part”…

Works Cited


Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.

Patricia Pothier
ENG 226
Survey of World Lit.
Dr. Hobbs

The Sun Also Rises
---------
Light and Darkness appears on page 94 of the book and is referenced to the lives of Sabina and Franz. Their lives intertwine yet the two characters define these terms very differently. Throughout the novel Kundera discusses his own interpretation of the terms light and dark. It is in this section that he lays out a clearer definition based in his own interpretation. He does this by using two of the books main characters.
Kundera opens the section with, “Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness.” Sabina’s life symbolizes lightness of being. She uses these terms, light and dark, figuratively. The two words become like borders to her which present limitations. Deciding to rebel against the limitations these terms represent she develops a distaste for “extremism”. An extremist is understood to be one who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm. It is a term used frequently in regards to politics. Kundera writes, “A passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.” This provides the reader with a better idea of Sabina’s lightness of being. At the end of the section he defines Sabina’s interpretation of darkness. He writes, “But for her, darkness did not mean infinity; for her, it meant a disagreement with what she saw, the negation of what was seen, the refusal to see.” Since Sabina dislikes extremes she chooses to shy away from blinding light and total darkness.
Franz however, applies the two terms literally. Light to him is not a representation as it is to Sabina. Kundera writes, “[light] evoked the source of light itself: the sun, a light bulb, a spotlight.” Franz is a weighty character. In the novel he is bothered by lightness which creates a need for importance in practically every event he comes across. In terms of darkness, Kundera depicts a strong desire that attracts Franz; even though he knows it to be laughable to make love in the dark, he still closes his eyes when he has sex with Sabina. Kundera writes, “The darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless.” It eliminates borders and allows him to capture a sense of infinity. To Sabina, the closing of his eyes makes him lifeless almost dead to her. Since seeing is living she in turn closes her eyes as well.
Kundera used these terms to provide a better window into the lives of Sabina and Franz. By doing so he contrasts their characters and shows the complexities that come with the intimacy of their relationship.

Katie Ganning
Dr. B. L. Hobbs
ENG 226: Survey of World Literature II
20 April 2010
Beauty Is In the Eye of the Beholder
In every country, there is the pride and culture of the people that create diversity from other countries. As much as some may look down upon other cultures, they must also remember that possibly their lifestyle is not of a liking to others too. In Kundera’s The Lightness of Being, Sabina’s lovers Franz looks down upon New York’s beauty because of the structure on which it was built, unintentional.
As Franz and Sabina walk through New York, he draws the conclusion that each building is created out of human design and not well thought out. Similar to the way he felt of New York, it is possible that he meant the mannerism of the political stand-point. “Beauty in the European sense has always had a premeditated quality to it. We’ve always had an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan.” (Kundera 101) Since America was originally govern by the monarchy of England, the rebels of the country decided on gaining independence and overtime created a government solely on freedom of the people. As he sees the beauty of New York unpleasant, Sabina sees it as, “Beauty by mistake.” (101)
Similar to his metaphor about mountains, that every step you take is different than the last, he defines New York as similar. As a whole, Franz saw New York as unplanned with everything thrown together without putting much thought into it at all, but Sabina saw New York as one of her paintings. Sabina’s style of art was what one would call abstract, like New York; as a whole you see everything together and it may look a bit confusing, but if you see the details, like the way she saw the people passing by, it begins to create a form of appreciation to the art and the person who created the work.
 
Works Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper Perennial, 1999.

Dana Jennings
Dr. Hobbs
ENG-226
20-4-10

The Bearable Heaviness of Woman

Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a pessimistic and tragic story of a love triangle, or rather, love polygon. Therefore it follows that Kundera’s definition of the word “woman” is drastically different than the Oxford English Dictionary or mine. We have a few examples of women, namely Tereza, Sabina and Marie-Claude. The most sympathetic, in my opinion, is Sabina, even despite her being complicit in the infidelity of at least two men. This is because she is the lightest in the novel, the one that recognizes her indiscretions and is able to find her balancing place in her life.

The other two women are heavy, not physically, but metaphysically. They represent marriage and fidelity, and a chain to keep the men grounded. The men, Tomas and Franz are constantly chafing against their chains and in the end Marie-Claude is forced to metaphorically strangle Franz with his chains. I do not respect Tereza, which I cannot figure out if Kundera wants us to respect her or not. She is a rube, which is forgivable, but she is a willing participant and enabler of Tomas and his indiscretions.

Kundera uses a method of definition that is conversational and informal, discussing particular women rather than a broad statement of gender or the sex. He ends the definition of women with “It was then he had his first inkling of what it means to suffer” (91). This is a terrible view of women to be left with, and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

He chose certain words as his “misunderstood” words because they best represented to him the lightness and heaviness of the world around him. He sees women as heavy objects, and therefore places value to them, but he changes the norm by placing questionable values to them. His most sympathetic female character is an accomplice to adultery many times over. This is his method of questioning our values and forcing us to rethink how we view the world and the object in it. I state it that way because I feel that Kundera does see women as objects, either to be conquered like a mountain or evaded like an invading horde.

Work Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry. Heim. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Print.

Antonette Boynes
HON ENG 226: Survey of World Literature II
Dr. Lee Hobbs
04-18-2010

Eternal…………..?

The concept of Eternal Return is basically a notion that history occurs again and again. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, commences with a discussion on this topic. He denies any possibility of the return being valid because of the fate of humans, humans fall into total rejection of established laws and institutions, unless he/she believes in eternal return of their actions, consequently, giving their actions weight.
Tomas is a very worthless man, whose sexual encounters are nothing more than the very adjective that describes him. They are all meaningless to him, until fate throws him Tereza. Tomas’s continuous unfaithfulness causes her much pain, nevertheless she endures all his betrayals and is more attracted to him, and vice versa. On page 33, he uses the expression Es Muss Sein, to express their relationship; it must be!
Kundera uses the theme of eternal return as a writing motif . When Tomas uses the Es Muss Sein expression to describe his relationship with Tereza, he finds meaning, something associated with weight. Although it may seem as thought it was his choice, clearly in the book, Tomas acquired feelings for Tereza which he could not control making it destiny, not his choice of destiny. Many times situations happen that have to be put up with and cannot be escaped.
At the ending of the novel, Kundera says, "And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition." At this point Kundera acknowledges Nietzsche's point of view on the eternal recurrence permitting meaningless survival, however he is teasing Nietzsche, knowing the survival is impossible because the eternal return does not and cannot happen! It is all a wish.

Branka Trivanovic


Dr. B. Lee Hobbs ENG 226 Survey of World Literature
II [HONORS]


22 April 2010




The Faustian Pact: Not Just for Goethe




If one was to number the amount of books available around the world the count
could surely go on for weeks, if not months. There are a variety of
books available covering a range of topics, and it is not strange to
find two books that contain similar ideas. One key aspect of any work
is the symbolism that it carries within it. It may not be evident at
first, but many books carry the same symbolism, just written
differently. Looking at Moliere’s Tartuffe and Goethe’s Faust, Part I,
the similarity may not be initially apparent. Although the idea of the
“Faustian Pact” was not a literary notion at the time of Tartuffe or
Faust for that matter, it is undeniable that both carry a certain air
about it. In other words, both Moliere and Goethe touched on the
subject before it was conceptualized many years later.


In Moliere’s Tartuffe, Orgon’s Devil comes in the form of a selfish, deceitful man
named Tartuffe. The Faustian Pact that exists between Orgon and
Tartuffe is that of a strongbox. The strongbox contains documents that
were given to Orgon by Argas, a friend that was fleeing the area and
needed someone to take care of the documents, “on which his property
and life depend” (313). Orgon foolishly gave the strongbox to Tartuffe
for safekeeping, but it came back to haunt him later when Tartuffe uses
the strongbox to try to frame Orgon. It contained documents “of an
enemy of the crown” (323) and his failure to report his friend Argas,
leaves him vulnerable to arrest. On page 319, Line 1729 there is a
mention of a “pact.” Orgon receives a visit from Monsieur Loyal who
states that he has been sent by Tartuffe to deliver news. Orgon gets
his hopes up that the visit will bring some “accommodation”, only to
find out that he and his family have a day to move out of their home
because Tartuffe is taking possession of it. In Scene 7, the Gentleman
of the King’s Guard along with Tartuffe come to Orgon and Tartuffe
proclaims, “we arrest you now in the King’s name” (324). One piece of
paper, one signature was all it took for Orgon’s life as we know it to
end. In the end, however, it is revealed that the King did not fall for
Tartuffe’s ploy and that the man that would go to jail would be
Tartuffe himself. Orgon was free to stay in his home and was even
praised for keeping his friend Argas out of harm’s way.


Unlike
Moliere’s Tartuffe, Goethe’s Faust did not have a particularly happy
ending. Faust is a man who, despite all of his knowledge is not
satisfied with his life. He feels that even though he has book smarts,
he has he has not experienced life to its fullest. He feels that joy
has left his life and he is looking to bring it back. He seems to be
going through what might these days be viewed as an existential crisis.
In the section entitled Night, Faust is reading from a book when a
Spirit appears to him. The Spirit tells Faust that his breaths had
plead it into view but in the end says to him, “You are like the spirit
you can comprehend, not me” (21). Faust is distraught by the thought
that not even someone close to God could help him out. The scene
somewhat foreshadows what is about to happen next. The next day is
Easter, and Wagner convinces Faust to go into town with him to
celebrate the occasion. While walking around the countryside, Faust
notices a black poodle following him. The poodle “tows a wake of fire”
(40) which Wagner does not see with his eyes and Faust becomes
increasingly uncomfortable as the pooch comes closer to the two men. In
Faust, the dog is a representation of Satan. Faust sees it because of
his contact with the Spirit. Later on when Faust is in the study with
the poodle, Faust is annoyed with the dog because it keeps howling and
barking from behind the stove. To Faust’s horror, the poodle transforms
from an animal to a man and Mephistopheles appears dressed like a
travelling scholar. It is clear to Faust that this is not an entity to
be taken lightly, but none-the-less enters a pact with Mephisto who
promises to give him all of the worldly pleasures. Faust asks what the
quid pro quo is, to which Mephisto replies, “before that’s wanted much
time will have passed” (56), but Faust persists and essentially ends up
writing up his own death certificate. He is convinced that Mephisto
will not be able to make him “settle on a bed of ease” (57) and says
that if that day comes then he will become Mephisto’s servant that very
day. Mephisto gladly accepts the challenge and when Faust offers his
hand as a way to close the deal, Mephisto instead requests “a line or
two” (58), signed in blood. As the story progresses and the two travel
the world, Faust, disguised as a young man meets a young girl named
Gretchen. Mephisto tries to warn him that she will be no good for him,
but Faust does not listen. Through the course of the play, Faust
manages to send Gretchen’s life on a downward spiral. First, he gives
Gretchen a “sleeping potion” to slip to her mom so that he can visit
her at night. The potion turns out to be a poison and Gretchen’s mother
meets an untimely death. Her brother, Valentine, suffers the same fate
when he challenges Faust to a duel. With Mephisto’s guidance, Faust
wins and Gretchen is left with no family to speak of. Next, Gretchen
hints that she is pregnant with Faust’s child, meanwhile Faust and
Mephisto disappear. She is left to be an unmarried pregnant woman. In
all her shame she drowns the newborn child and is condemned to death.
Faust realizes that he is partly responsible for her plight and asks
Mephisto to help him break Gretchen out of her prison cell. Mephisto
reminds him that it is Faust who called for him and not the other way
around, but eventually agrees to help Faust free Gretchen. Despite his
magic tricks on the guards and the key to the lock, Gretchen refuses to
go with Faust. She sees him for what he really is—an old man and seeing
Mephisto with him she cries to the Court of God to save her. Mephisto
tells Faust to leave her or that he will leave him there with her. It
ends with a voice stating that Gretchen “is saved” and Mephisto say’s
“Come here to me” (168) to Faust. As they disappear, Gretchen is heard
calling Faust’s name from within but he is long gone with the Lord of
the Flies.


Although Tartuffe and Faust were written in different
centuries, they carry a similar message and that is, to never put one’s
life in someone else’s hands. Orgon gave the strongbox to Tartuffe
which almost left him homeless and even in prison as traitor to the
Crown. The obvious contrast between the two is that Faust literally
signed his life over to the Devil by making a deal with Mephisto. He
wanted to experience joy but in the end ended up even more
disappointed. He also ended up being responsible for the downfall of an
innocent soul that he found in Gretchen. Unlike Orgon who was able to
get rid of Tartuffe and continue a life of normalcy, Faust remained
forever bound to his hellish companion.




Works Cited Goethe, Johann




Wolfgang Von. Faust, Part I. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005. Moliere.


Tartuffe and Other Plays. New York: Signet Classics, 2007. �

Muriel Clemens
Dr. B. Lee Hobbs
ENG 226 Survey of English Literature II (Honors)
April 22, 2010
To Have Faith or Not Have Faith
That is the Question:
Faust and The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The story of Faust is an old one and Goethe is not the first one to tell it. But in Goethe’s telling, “It is a man thinking and making images in extraordinary language” (ix). Faust is a man who is miserable because feels he has learned all he can as a human being and it is not enough. Because of this he is contemplating suicide. Similarly, in the Unbearable Lightness of Being Tereza is a woman who is uncomfortable with who she is. Her mother was an exhibitionist and her stepfather was a pervert so there was little stability or comfort in her youth. In reading Faust one quickly learns that the only thing that Faust has faith in is his misery; however, in reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being we see that Tereza has no faith in her relationship with Tomas.
Faust is a very unhappy man, “My title is Master, Doctor even and up the hill and down again nearly ten years wherever I please I’ve led my pupils by the nose- and see what we can know is naught. When I knew this it seared my heart” (Goethe 360-365). His misery is so deep that he decides to take his life, “This drink, this last, my making, my own choosing, with all my soul I do present it now in high salute and ceremony to the morning” (Goethe 734-736). This event is taking place the night before Easter and it is the sound of the Choir of Angles that stops Faust from drinking the liquid, “The deep hum, the bright notes, why do they force down from my lips the lifted crystal?’ (Goethe 742-743) It is not long after this scene that Mephistopheles, the devil, appears and offers Faust a way out of his wretchedly unhappy life, “I bind myself to serve you here and non-stop do your bidding, tirelessly” (Goethe1656-1657). Of course the devil wants Faust’s soul and Faust is not stupid enough to simply say yes. He chooses his words wisely, “If ever I shall tell the moment: Bide here, you are so beautiful! Then you can fetter me and I’ll go gladly to perdition that instant” (Goethe 1699-1702). If Mephistopheles can make Faust happy then Faust will go willingly to Hell.
It is Faust’s faith in his misery that gives him the resourcefulness to make this bargain with Mephistopheles. Faust has nothing to lose by making this wager because he does not really believe in Hell, “Over there is small concern of mine. Once you have smashed this world to smithereens the other may rise then if it will. My joys well from this earth alone and on my sufferings only this sun shines” (Goethe 1660-1664). He is a man who believes only in his misery, the only thing he has faith in.
In Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being we find Tereza. In this story Tereza meets Tomas, a womanizing physician. Tereza has a strange affect on Tomas, “He had come to feel an inexplicable love for this all but complete stranger; she seemed a child to him, a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream for Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed” (Kundera 6). Because Tomas felt this way about Tereza, he kept coming back to her.
Kundera wrote of Tereza, “She took after her mother, and not only physically” (Kundera 43). He also said “If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress” (Kundera 46). This is how Tereza grew up. In many ways Tereza was an innocent. This naiveté was the reason “she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others” (Kundera 50). This was what Tomas loved, this innocence. But he was incapable of staying out of other women’s beds. Tomas’s infidelity caused Tereza so much pain that it gave her nightmares:
While she marched around the pool naked with a large group
of other women, Thomas stood over them in a basket hanging
from the pool’s arched roof, shouting at them, making them
sing and do kneebends. The moment one of them did a faulty
kneebend, he would shoot her. (Kundera 59).
It was Tereza’s total lack of faith in Tomas that gave her these nightmares. In an odd way it was also this lack of faith that kept her with him. This lack of faith is what would lead Tereza to her own act of infidelity.
Tereza has another dream. In this one she tells Tomas that she can’t take his adultery anymore. He tells her that he has taken care of everything and all she has to do is climb Petrin Hill. What she finds there is an assassin who says she has to be a willing participant in her death. He cannot kill her if her decision to die is not her own but she knows this is what Tomas wants so she says yes. In the end she can’t do it. This dream is why she is unfaithful to Tomas. This was Tereza’s reasoning for her actions:
But then it occurred to her that she was actually being sent to him
by Tomas. Hadn’t he told her time and again that love and sexuality
had nothing in common? Well, she was merely testing his words,
confirming them. She could almost hear him say “I understand you.
I know what you want. I’ve taken care of everything. You’ll
see when you get up there. (Kundera 163)
Her justification for her disloyalty is another sign of her lack of faith in Tomas and he never learns of it.
Reading these two books gives us a glimpse of the human condition from two different perspectives. In Goethe’s Foust we see the depth of Faust’s misery and how he has enough faith in that misery that he makes a deal with the devil and in some ways it is a more powerful faith than want we see in Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. While Kundera’s story may be less powerful it is never the less a poignant lack of faith. Tereza stays with Tomas until the end.

Works Cited
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von, and David Constantine. Faust the First Part of the Tragedy. London: Penguin, 2005. Print.
Kundera, Milan, and Michael Henry Heim. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New
York: Harper Perennial, 2008. Print.

Dawn Serzanin
Dr. Hobbs
ENG 226 Survey of World Lit. II
22 April 2010

Sound or Silence

Music is the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary. Milan Kundera discusses the meaning of music in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Words can be defined in dictionaries to have a single meaning, but in many cases individual people interpret words much differently.
Kundera lists music as a misunderstood word. Unlike the dictionary definition, to Kundera the meaning of music was much more. It was not about the sounds that were put together or the continuity of sounds. Sabina understood music as if it were a book definition she did not take the time to think more of the sounds she was hearing. Franz on the other hand truly appreciated every genre of music. It was not only the art of music he enjoyed and got lost in but the distraction it created. His job was to teach and have everyone always listening to what he had to say, he found music an escape from that.
In the novel, the author uses his characters to define and help the reader understand what his definition of a word is. Using real life situations and examples gives a deeper meaning to his definition because it is being applied. Kundera seemed to have chosen the word music because there were many links to it. Music is a part of most people’s lives even if they do not make a conscious effort to put it there. By using the theme of lightness and weight to help understand what Kundera thinks of music you can see he wanted it to be a lighter thing. He wanted it to be an escape from the everyday world and less of a science.
Kundera uses the section of his novel Words Misunderstood to better define what words me in our everyday life. He introduces new ways of defining words in order to inspire and intrigue his readers. Milan Kundera steps outside conformity of a single definition and explains words as his characters see them.

Katie Ganning
Dr. B. L. Hobbs
ENG 226H: Survey of World Literature II
22 April 2010
Me, Myself and The World
Children have used the guidance of their parents to show them how to live and survive in the society they are raised. They are treated a certain way, not because the parents want to torment them with constant reminders of their meaning in life, but to guide them into the right direction in hopes they will overcome the negativity of society and the people who walk among us every day. Once children have mastered both their learning methods and work ethic, they become young adults and these young adults have the choice, to attain self-determination or live in the constant following of others. According to Father Agostino Gemelli, who writes the foreward in the studies of Roberto Zavalloni, Self determination, or “personal freedom, is marked by a psychic process through which a conscious subject, through influence in his actions by concrete conditions, is capable of self determination, without being coerced of determined by the impending action of external and internal forces.” (xi) As humans we are all born into this world with the right to make choices. In a way this is a form of autonomy. As one grows with the nurture of adults and nature of the surroundings, it eventually becomes one’s choice to choose the path to take.
In Goethe’s Faust, Faust has attained self determination by his constant learning and gaining knowledge that in our natural law one is capable of accomplishing. When Mephistopheles, who portrays the devil, is given the chance by God to challenge His own follower who is believed would not fall into the trap of temptation that Mephistopheles has planned to do. At first, Mephistopheles pretends to guide Faust into happiness by giving him the power to receive his love Margarete. Since she is innocent and pure, Margarete does not give in to the temptation of Faust’s attraction, but her determination is soon abolished and falls into the hands of Mephistophele. By the fancy of jewelry, she begins to feel different of her original morals, “Day and night she thinks of the gold and silver, But more of him who brought it to her”. (51-52) It is simple for humans to be easily directed wrongly by their weaknesses because it gives them the satisfaction during that moment in time.
As Faust does fall into Mephistopheles lies and temptation, he begins to lose everything which he grew to love and eventually is taken into Hell. As much as some people want to believe they have everything in life figured out, they choose the guidance of other people to seek more knowledge. Life is not always meant for one to have others do everything for their favor because it then takes away the power of learning knowledge and therefore defeats the purpose of learning and experience. Freedom is not given, but acquired.
Many people see religion as a guide to attaining the positive form of self determination. In early Christian history, followers of God are given commandments and sacraments in order to live in this world comfortably. For over a thousand years, people were able to follow these rules and lived a happy lifestyle, but as people continued to grow with their knowledge, they began to question the higher authority they have followed for so long and wondered, is their really a God? In 17th century France, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, but prefers to be called Moliere, created a play called, Tartuffe which was immediately censored by King Louis XVI because of its relation to mocking the Christian faith. Eventually the play was taken off as being censored and is now taken as a form of entertainment rather than relating it to real life. However, in every society, there are false personalities of people who pretend to live a certain way and then eventually make people follow their form of living which can lead them into the wrong direction.
When Tartuffe is taken in by Orgon’s family, Orgon is drawn to Tartuffe’s preaching and begins to follow him to attain happiness, but as he continues to follow his teachings, his family begins to question Tartuffe’s reason for being here, “But since he’s taken Tartuffe as his hero, His sanity has been reduced to zero”. (Moliere 83-84) Religion teaches humans to live a moral life the way God wants one to live, but since humans are given souls they test certain teachings and question because one does not like the idea of God being higher than human life. Eventually, Tartuffe’s secret is revealed to the family and is immediately asked by the family to be imprisoned. As much as Tartuffe has learned from his actions, he has lived his life being an imposter to different families so he does not have to do anything for himself. Many different people use their knowledge of self determination to manipulate people into thinking their way is the only way to seek happiness, but it is through one’s own learning and self experience that one can gain the freedom they choose to have in order to live the life they want.
In both cases of Faust and Tartuffe, the known intelligent characters are considered to be not fooled and would in fact conquered self determination. However, through their actions, it is clear to say that possibly even the smartest people may not have attain the freedom they wish to attain because it is by the nature surrounding one that holds back their own choices and personal freedom.
It is difficult for an individual to reach self determination when the constant actions of others lead people in the wrong direction. Humans are given choices between right and wrong, good or bad, but it is hard to choose which way is correct. By people putting their faith into objects that are easily broken or give false hope, they are only temporarily answering the questions they look for and not reaching eternal answers. To say free will is an illusion may or may not be wrong, but it does not answer what happens in the afterlife of one’s soul. One of the only possible ways for humans to attain self determination is by living with good morals and values. After one has determined their lifestyle, they might become confused with their meaning, which many collectivistic people cannot answer and eventually fall into worldly possession. As much as certain societies believe in only serving for their country, the resources given by other cultures improve their way of living in the mannerism they want.
By one person only living for their self determination defeats the purpose of involvement of others and the reason for anything else as being part of one’s life. In almost every situation, things go hand in hand with each other; society needs a leader and the leader needs a society to order. One does not have to correct another into living exactly as them, but by being an example of having the control of one’s life can guide others to live with personal freedom while living with temptations of things that do not attribute to eternal living. 
Works Cited
Gemelli O.F.M, Fr. Agostino. Foreword. Self Determination: The Psychology of Personal Freedom. By Roberto Zavalloni. Chicago, IL. Forum Books, 1962. vii-xxiii.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von. Faust, Part 1. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2005.
Poquelin, Jean-Baptist "Moliere". Tartuffe and Other Plays. New York, NY: Signet Classics, 2007.

Antonette Boynes
HON ENG 226: Survey of World Literature II
Dr. Lee Hobbs
04-20-2010

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Woman in a Doll’s House

Cook, clean, care, three terms that summarize the intended niche of women, but why? It has been prepared that everything has a balance in order for the world to progress, such as good/bad, big/small, and so forth opposites. Therefore there has to be disparity between the man/woman counterparts for there to be equilibrium. The masculine foil has always been known to be in control and have their way with any and every thing. They have also been identified as having little manners, being greedy, and somewhat demonstrating very sparse genuine emotions of faithfulness and love. In the following novels that will be discussed, the character portrayed by the female gender is an essential one to the plot and consequently brings much controversy and attention to the image that the author is illustrating to the audience on his point of view on the feminine homo sapien.
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a very realistic play written in modern form. The main theme is a woman struggling for her liberation and independence. Nora is labeled as the conventional 19th century woman attempting to be unshackled from the norm. From the early beginning of the play, the author has already set Nora’s character to what he wants the audience to suppose as the role of a woman. Torvald’s rather insulting undertaking to Nora consisted of the names that he referred to her as. On page 148 he asks, “Has my little featherbrain been out wasting all my money again?” At this early point in the story it was already frustrating to see that he would use such a degrading term to describe his own wife. It was interesting that Nora answered to these names because it is quite rare to actually see a response from a female who was treated like a trained dog and given “Scooby snacks” when she performed well. Torvald appeared much more pleasant than what has usually been told and heard about men back in these days. Though Torvald treated Nora like his pet, he showed much care and affection for her unlike the vociferous animals that were described in history books that dominated females. As the story advances, it is revealed that Nora has been treated like a pet all her life, first by her father, now Torvald.
Torvald in this passage is exemplifying his masculine traits and the way he is supposed to perform as head of the household. His role is to protect and provide for his family and also set rules to maintain order to his standards without question.
On the contrary, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Tereza is not verbally despoiled comparable to Nora, but is certainly dishonored by Tomas and all of his sexual flings that anesthetizes her heart with pain. In this text, the male figure, Tomas also demonstrates his masculinity but in a different mode than Helmer in A Doll’s House. Masculinity is portrayed in a matter of three attributes; dictatorial control of the male, partisanship by the woman, and impartiality of the woman.
The impartiality of the women is witnessed throughout the book in many situations. Throughout the book there are citations on male fantasies, porn, and ridiculous, heartless, sexual relations of the protagonists. On page 198 it states, “When his friends asked him how many women he had had in his life, he would try to evade the question, and when they pressed him further he would say, “Well, two hundred, give or take a few.”” Tomas’s method of showing his manliness was not to be in control of women, but to be in control of himself at all times and have to answer to no one for his decisions. Unlike Nora and Torvald, who had a family and a structured order, Tomas went on day to day as a carefree man with no attachments to feelings or females. Tomas was not a flirt, but a severe womanizer who was in need of desperate help in my opinion. Women were in the nude a lot of times. Tereza’s mom was an activist of the nude as Kundera suggests when she states that there is no need to hide the body because everyone has the same thing and no one is more special than the other person. At this point, all that can be drawn from such a situation is that the author is suggesting the women are tools of enjoyment for males and whatever the man pleases to do with them confirms his manhood. It also shows the weakness and helplessness of women to become victims of the predator that arrive and capture their territory.
Another instance of feminine infirmity was when Mr. Krogstad was blackmailing Nora and had her stressed out. At this point, the audience was probably drawn in to praying for the very same “miracle” while reading the book that Krogstad would go down looking like an idiot or his plan would never fall through and Nora would be safe. Nora did get her “miracle” just not the one she expected.
A Doll’s House was improved by the display of dictatorship by Torvald tremendously because it increased the heightened emotions of the audience ad they read the amount of anxiety and nervous tension she endured while being held at a most uncomfortable position by Krogstad, and treated like a poor fool by her husband. Women were obligated to conform to a masculine based society. In the end, when she left it almost seemed as one of those moments to give a standing ovation for the character even though did cannot hear or see.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being lacked the amount of anticipation and interest that was generated by A Doll’s House mainly because it was not a play, and was told as a story. However, it was greatly improved by all the other information that was presented along with it such as the notions of light/darkness and the digression from the story every now and again to explain what is being talked about.
In conclusion, the feminine and masculine roles occupy diametrically opposite poles and are both represented in Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and Ibsen’s “A Doll’d House” respectively. According to the novels, masculinity ideals include authority, male control, female objectification, submission, while feminist concepts encompass female independence, male resistance and the real representation of womanhood and motherhood.

Works Cited

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House and Other Plays. Great Britain: Penguin Classics, 1965.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Modern Classics, 1984.

World remembers Prague Spring

Brooke King
Dr. Hobbs
ENG 435
13 February 2012
Defamiliarization by Shklovsky: Transforming Kundera's Bowler Hat
In Shklovsky's essay, "Art as Technique," he questions the habitualization and automatism of human life. Art, however, counters this automatic perception of life by taking familiar object and casts them in a new light, therefore defamiliarizing what is known about the object and in essence, creating a new perception for it (Rivkin and Ryan 16). Taking into the account of Shklovsky's theory, we can see through Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being that the act of taking a familiar object and rendering in a different light, changes the perception of the object.
The bowler hat, which is a recurring symbol in Sabina's life, acts as an extension of her youthful rebellious nature and her erotic euphoria. Kundera picks out the blower hat because it belonged to Sabina's grandfather, a traditional construct of gender relations within society. The meaning of the hat, however, transforms from a playful rebellion by Sabina in her youth to an erotic plaything that both Tomas and Franz encountered as an extension of Sabina's sexual femininity. However, Tomas' transformation of the hat into an erotic object also transforms Sabina's being:
When she opened the door, she stood before him on her beautiful long legs wearing nothing but panties and bra. And a black blower hat. She stood there staring, mute and motionless. Tomas did the same. Suddenly he realized how touched he was. He removed the blower hat from her head and placed it on the bedside table. Then they made love without saying a word. (Kundera 28)
However, the hat's symbolism transformed from the masculine perception of domination to Tomas and Sabina's new perception of female masculinity. Kundera uses the transformation of the bowler hat's perception to create the beautiful link of humanity that the defamiliarization of an object can bring. Shklovsky argues that it is the beauty in art that can bring together the defamiliarized object in order to create a special perception of the object. Kundera exhibits this artistry when he transfers the usual perception of a bowler hat from a masculine construct "into the sphere of new perception" (Rivkin and Ryan 19) by attributing feminine attributes onto the masculine object: "The image in the mirror was instantaneously transformed: suddenly it was a woman in her undergarments, beautiful, distant, indifferent woman with a terribly out-of-place bowler hat on her head holding the hand of a man in a gray suit and tie" (Kundera 85). For Sabina, the hat has not changed from the new perception of eroticism, but for Franz, he still viewed the hat in the usual perception and so did not understand his mistresses meaning behind the gesture of putting the hat on and standing half naked before him.
Kundera, as Shklovsky points out in his essay, does not change the nature of the bowler hat, it is still a hat. However, by making unfamiliar in description the purposed meaning of the hat, Kundera has created artistry by linking a new perception of an object with a different take on the body and soul of a human being. By presenting a new perception on human body interaction mingling with soul interaction through the use of a bowler hat, Kundera is able to demonstrate the breakdown in traditional gender relations within society.

Works Cited
Shklovsky, Viktor. "Art as Technique." 1916. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 15 - 21. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1985. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harperperennial, 2009. Print.

Travis N. Rathbone
Dr. B. Lee Hobbs
ENG 435
29 February 2012

Signifying Significant Headdress: Applying Saussure to Kundera

In the seminal work “Course in General Linguistics,” Ferdinand de Saussure posits that a sign system can be parsed into two correlative parts: the concept and the sound-image—the signified and the signifier respectively: “The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (Saussure 61). Though the relationship between the signifier and the signified is of a vital, inseparable nature, the two are also characterized by a completely random coupling. In other words, the connection between the concept and the sound-image is arbitrary. This point is illustrated by simply looking at numerous languages and the myriad linguistic symbols for a single word—a cat for example. Though the concept might remain static, the sound-image is dynamic. For Saussure, the signifier is “unmotivated, i.e. arbitrary in that it has no actual connection with the signified” (Saussure 62). At first glance, this particular brand of theorizing might seem difficult to apply to literature; however, playing with the meaning and interpretation of a certain sign can hold great worth for the practitioner of literary analysis.

In general usage, if the signifier is characterized by its transmutations and the signified remains relatively constant, perhaps there is substance in flipping the properties of these terms and interpreting them in a new way. If the sound-image remained constant but the concept underwent metamorphosis, some interesting insights might come to bear. Indeed, this form of property exchange already seems to occur in the sense that two people can discuss the same thing (sound-image) but feel differently about what exactly is being represented (concept). This will especially be of interest when analyzing the sign that is the bowler hat in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. For the purposes of this analysis, only the viewpoints of Tomas and Franz will be analyzed. However, a more exhaustive approach would include examinations of Sabina and Tereza as well.

Amongst the layers of subtle metaphor and symbolism in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the bowler hat is a recurring motif that holds a multifarious significance to the characters that populate the work. For one character, the bowler hat holds a significance that transforms throughout the course of her story: “[The bowler hat] returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed” (Kundera 88). For the sexually liberated and spiritually light Sabina, the bowler hat is an issuance of patrimony that was once worn by her grandfather. The first time the bowler hat is introduced within the novel is during a clandestine meeting between Tomas and Sabina: “When [Sabina] opened the door, she stood before [Tomas] on her beautiful long legs wearing nothing but panties and bra. And a black bowler hat. She stood there staring, mute and motionless” (Kundera 28). Tomas’ reaction to this gesture was to be expected. Without saying a word, he took the hat and placed it on the bedside table; they then made love. Within the pages outlined by the text, Tomas’ association with the hat is sexually charged if not fleeting. In the third part of the novel, the reader again witnesses Tomas’ reaction to the bowler hat: “[D]uring a visit to her studio . . . the bowler hat had caught Tomas’ fancy” (Kundera 86). After placing the hat on her head, the two lovers observe each other in a mirror: “And all at once she realized they were both excited by what they saw in the mirror” (Kundera 86). The brevity of his encounter with the hat is deliberate, and even though the sound-image in this instance was identical to that of Sabina’s, the hat embodied different ideals for both. These ideals were different, even, from the way it is viewed by another of Sabina’s lovers, Franz.

Unlike Tomas, who much like Sabina is spiritually and sexually light, Franz’s nature is augmented by a much heavier composition. His substantive conscious and preoccupation with fairly shallow ideals attend to his less than transcendental presence. For Franz, the bowler hat represents something he cannot quite understand; it represents a foolish, uncomfortable state of being, and it introduces a level of uncertainty in life and love—especially his love for Sabina. Franz’s encounter with the bowler hat ends similarly to Tomas’ initial encounter with the headpiece. “[H]e gently took the brim of the bowler hat between two fingers, lifted it off Sabina’s head with a smile, and laid it back on the wig stand. It was as though he were erasing the mustache a naughty child had drawn on a picture of the Virgin Mary” (Kundera 85). This action, however, was not followed by throws of passion as in the former instance. Instead, Franz takes his leave of his mistress, and Sabina remains in her apartment to once more ponder the significance of the bowler hat.

Though this analysis is barely scratching the surface of the text and the multifarious roles the bowler hat plays, a more exhaustive endeavor would surely include a study of each major character in the novel. Though the sound-image of the bowler hat remains the same for the characters, the concept clearly differs in significance for each. A more thorough examination of the text would also include reference to the referent, which for the immediate purpose would provide too much substance to go into here.

Works Cited
De Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course in General Linguistics.” 1916. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 59-71. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1984.

Travis N. Rathbone
Dr. B. Lee Hobbs
ENG 435
9 March 2012

In Search of Common Ground: The Chain of Signification in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The displacement of meaning down a perpetual chain of signifiers is one of the salient ideas championed in Jacque Derrida’s essay “Différance.” Ultimately, a sign is not an autonomous entity but relies on, and is relied upon by, other signs to garner significance. Derrida illustrates this point by stating that “[e]very [signified] concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences” (Derrida 285). The issue that subsequently arises is whether any significance can be achieved at all, for if the meaning of a sign is perpetually passing down an endless chain of signifiers, certitude will never be achieved. This “difference” of meaning and the implications therein are made apparent in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In applying Jacque Derrida’s notion of the endless chain of signifiers to Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, one need to look no further than the section of the novel aptly titled “Misunderstood Words” to see the volatile nature of language. The perpetual play of signifiers—each impressing and containing within it the other—can be seen in the interactions between Franz and Sabina, specifically in reference to the bowler hat: “[H]e listened eagerly to the story of her life ad she was equally eager to hear the story of his, but although they had a clear understanding of the logical meaning of the words they exchanged, they failed to hear the semantic susurrus of the river flowing through them” (Kundera 88). Ultimately, the bowler hat represents something different for each character. For Sabina, the hat embodies a plethora of meaning and significance. For Franz, it held no meaning at all: “What made him feel uncomfortable was its very lack of meaning” (Kundera 88). The bowler hat is one representation of the constant misunderstanding between Franz and Sabina, but it is also merely the tip of the iceberg. A lexicon of other misunderstood words is also present in the novel.

When discussing the bowler hat, Kundera often follows a line of reasoning that ultimately appeals to a Derridian sensibility: “the bowler hat was a [river]bed through which each time Sabina saw another river flow, another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one” (Kundera 88). This seems to be an apt metaphor to illustrate the shortcomings of language and the inability to arrive at a point of single significance. In this case, meaning is forever held at bay, moving endlessly down the chain of signifiers until its place of origin is lost and its endpoint is incomprehensible. It is interesting to note that all hope of communication is not lost, for each signifier does contain within itself the minute presence of every other signifier. It is here that salvation from the wasteland of significant language can be found; if every signifier contains within itself the shadow of every other signifier, than there will always be present a faint trace of reciprocal significance. At least enough meaning is produced to foster some form of communication; if no meaning was present, communication would be impossible.

Perhaps this minutiae of understanding created the bases for Sabina and Franz’s union. Given their lexicon of misunderstood words was so vast, mutual understanding had to stem from some source. Perhaps the difficulty for Franz and Sabina is temporal by nature. Ultimately, Kundera suggests that once people mature and become set in their ways, it becomes more difficult to engage in a common understanding of significance—the epitome of words misunderstood.

Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. “Différance.” 1968. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 278-99. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1984. Print.

Tiffany Anne Carpenter
Dr. Hobbs
Eng 435- Literary Criticism
26 March 2012
Examining the rise of Sexuality and Gender Differences in
Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being
In her article on the “Politics of Domesticity,” Nancy Armstrong considers the role of female intellectual labor and the importance of how gender in relationship to domestic fiction is often overlooked. She argues that most theorists and critics of New Historicism tend to leave out the role of women and instead focus solely on economic and social histories in relationship to men and politics, leaving a large portion of innovative thought out of the equation, thought that comes from the inclusion of women and their domain of the personal and emergence of sexuality.
One of the works that we have considered throughout the semester, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera is a great example of how this type of gender focused critiques can be applied.
For example, the questions of the Soviet idea of morality might be examined in relationship to personal desires and sexuality in respect to the characters of the work such as Tomas, who is frequently finding new women to seduce and have affairs with, even in the midst of his marriage to Tereza, not to mention the consideration of the political changes of the time.
That approach might even be taken to another level in the consideration of how Sabina and Tereza view promiscuity in their society; Sabina has no problem sleeping around and finds sexual submission almost as a sense of freedom while Tereza has a predisposition to dislike the body, her body and the bodies of others, and feels almost ashamed and dirty as a result of sexual acts. For her, sexual desire is limited and almost harmful; the fact that her husband has affairs with other women and her “fling” with the man from the bar nearly destroys her internally because of her guilt and inability to cope with her own sexuality and the emergence of sexuality throughout the society around her with the people that she is constantly interacting with. She tries to avoid the focus of the sexual, and ultimately suffers because of it because of how prevalent that emergence and focus, and even violence, of sexuality is around her, namely in her husband and his long-term mistress, Sabina.
Another way to consider the arguments of Nancy Armstrong on the importance of viewing the female perspective in relationship to the personal and the political might be looking at Sabina’s sexuality; how she handles relationships with others, her view of her own sexual identity and promiscuity, her view and understanding of the sexuality that is represented in those around her. Even more important of an examination might be an in-depth look at Sabina’s perspective and fascination with the bowler hat and how it pertains to her in this way that she views it as this symbol of eroticism, sexual exploration and freedom, and even rebellion or betrayal. She uses this bowler hat as a way to leave behind her past and the conventions that might be seen in society; as a way to play up her sexual interactions with Tomas and allows him to overtake her in a sexual way, and even as a sense of almost having a separate identity when she wears the bowler hat to have sex with Tomas and Franz, leaving her inhibitions, emotions, and past behind her.
In these few examples, it becomes easy to see how Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being would be a great work to examine in the approach of women’s sexuality, their emergence as intellectuals, having independent views of sexuality, society, and even politics.
Work Cited
Armstrong, Nancy. “Some Call it Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity.” 1990. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 567-83. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.

Travis N. Rathbone
Dr. B. Lee Hobbs
ENG 435
26 March 2012

Observing Power Structures in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In this brief application, the subjects of analysis include the character Tomas—plucked directly from the pages of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being—and an implication, though decidedly truncated for the immediate use, of the structure of power as defined by Foucault in his work “Discipline in Punish.” More precisely, the object of analysis will derive from the aftermath of the panoptic form of power as it unapologetically institutes a scenario where a prisoner is an “object of information” instead of a “subject of communication.”

In dissecting and analyzing Tomas’ drive for erotic encounters with numerous women, the narrator in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being describes this philandering proclivity as a desire to discover the “unimaginable” that is unique to each individual woman: “What is unique about the “I” hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person” (Kundera 199). The narrator continues by stating that “[t]he individual “I” is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered” (Kundera 199). The word conquered in the previous example holds great significance, for it couples nicely with Tomas’ pursuit—which is simultaneously complex and power driven—and can be viewed through a Foucauldian lens.

Tomas’ search for the “I” within different women is meticulous by nature. Indeed, Tomas’ profession as a surgeon—a profession that provides practitioners with a power over the human form—can be viewed as a direct extension of this nature. He is used to dissecting and analyzing in search of something of import within the human form.

In his addressing the effects of the Panopticon, Foucault indicates that a prisoner of such a penitentiary would be unable to see his fellow inmates nor would he be able to see the watchmen in the central tower. Power, then, is impressed upon this prisoner in such a way that “[h]e is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication” (Foucault 554). For this reading, it is the above organization of power that Tomas illustrates. Tomas’ pursuit to conquer and analyze—once again harkening back to his profession as a surgeon—compels him to view the women with whom he beds as “objects of information.” Though conceptually significant, his constant search for the “I” influences how he views women and thus how the structure of power is present in his sexual encounters.

The multifaceted nature by which Tomas engages his lovers should be stressed here, for his intentions do not lie completely in mere physical pleasures. The intentions behind his clandestine encounters might indeed be considered benign if not at least intriguing. However, when judging the worth of an end goal, the steps taken to obtain that goal should also fall under scrutiny. Tomas’ goal might hold value, but the question remains as to whether his actions are of commensurate worth.

Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” 1975. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 549-66. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1984. Print.

Tiffany Anne Carpenter
Dr. Hobbs
Eng 435- Literary Criticism
26 March 2012
Examining the rise of Sexuality and Gender Differences in
Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being
In her article on the “Politics of Domesticity,” Nancy Armstrong considers the role of female intellectual labor and the importance of how gender in relationship to domestic fiction is often overlooked. She argues that most theorists and critics of New Historicism tend to leave out the role of women and instead focus solely on economic and social histories in relationship to men and politics, leaving a large portion of innovative thought out of the equation, thought that comes from the inclusion of women and their domain of the personal and emergence of sexuality.
One of the works that we have considered throughout the semester, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera is a great example of how this type of gender focused critiques can be applied.
For example, the questions of the Soviet idea of morality might be examined in relationship to personal desires and sexuality in respect to the characters of the work such as Tomas, who is frequently finding new women to seduce and have affairs with, even in the midst of his marriage to Tereza, not to mention the consideration of the political changes of the time.
That approach might even be taken to another level in the consideration of how Sabina and Tereza view promiscuity in their society; Sabina has no problem sleeping around and finds sexual submission almost as a sense of freedom while Tereza has a predisposition to dislike the body, her body and the bodies of others, and feels almost ashamed and dirty as a result of sexual acts. For her, sexual desire is limited and almost harmful; the fact that her husband has affairs with other women and her “fling” with the man from the bar nearly destroys her internally because of her guilt and inability to cope with her own sexuality and the emergence of sexuality throughout the society around her with the people that she is constantly interacting with. She tries to avoid the focus of the sexual, and ultimately suffers because of it because of how prevalent that emergence and focus, and even violence, of sexuality is around her, namely in her husband and his long-term mistress, Sabina.
Another way to consider the arguments of Nancy Armstrong on the importance of viewing the female perspective in relationship to the personal and the political might be looking at Sabina’s sexuality; how she handles relationships with others, her view of her own sexual identity and promiscuity, her view and understanding of the sexuality that is represented in those around her. Even more important of an examination might be an in-depth look at Sabina’s perspective and fascination with the bowler hat and how it pertains to her in this way that she views it as this symbol of eroticism, sexual exploration and freedom, and even rebellion or betrayal. She uses this bowler hat as a way to leave behind her past and the conventions that might be seen in society; as a way to play up her sexual interactions with Tomas and allows him to overtake her in a sexual way, and even as a sense of almost having a separate identity when she wears the bowler hat to have sex with Tomas and Franz, leaving her inhibitions, emotions, and past behind her.
In these few examples, it becomes easy to see how Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being would be a great work to examine in the approach of women’s sexuality, their emergence as intellectuals, having independent views of sexuality, society, and even politics.
Work Cited
Armstrong, Nancy. “Some Call it Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity.” 1990. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 567-83. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.

Tiffany Anne Carpenter
Dr. Hobbs
Eng 435- Literary Criticism
2 April 2012
Examining Language, Desire and the Unconscious in Kundera
Jacques Lacan writes about how our unconscious desires are not based on our background or our instincts, and that they are very elementary in nature, depending on the role of the signifier in the things we see around us. Without going into depth on Lacan’s interpretations of the signifier and signified formula, it is interesting to note the importance of language and desire in Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being.
For Tomas, Tereza, and Sabina, sexuality is a key issue that plays into the way that they live their lives and interact with the people around them. While Tomas and Sabina are more aggressive in following through with their desires, Tereza is much more restrained and tends to deny herself whatever unconscious desires she might have stirring. Because she has such a horrible past that has given her negative feelings and traumatic experiences in relationship to the image of body and to her sexuality, Tereza struggles to continue suppressing her sexuality and desires because she is unable to break through those barriers and cannot move past her internal conflicts. Tomas and Sabina, however, are much more overt when it comes to their desires and they act upon them with little to no thought or consideration for the consequences. They have a much easier time acting spontaneously on their instincts and personal desires without having the internal struggles of what happens next, who they might be affecting in the process, etc. Instead, they are much more likely to behave based solely on their personal desires and wants and do things as they see fit in the moment. They might suffer or struggle with those decisions later, but living in the moment is much more their style, especially when it comes to their sexuality. In this way, Kundera uses these characteristics and extensive, graphic language to describe these scenes and the development of these characters to establish them and showcase the way that they operate in their environment and the way that they operate based off of their unconscious--which they essentially turn conscious because they are aware of them--desires, highlighting the importance of that language as Lacan points out.

Work Cited
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud.” 1957. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 447-61. Print.

Travis N. Rathbone
Dr. B. Lee Hobbs
ENG 435
16 April 2012

Who Watches the Watchmen?: Foucauldian Power Dynamics in
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Considered by many to be Milan Kundera’s most important work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, written by the Czech-born intellectual and published in French in 1984, offers its readers a story that is rife with a distinct symbolism that characterizes the novel’s theoretical framework. Intertwining moral conundrum, character tension, and philosophical underpinning, this conceptual tour de force is masterfully executed from the onset of the narration to the comparatively sleepy, if not emotionally tender, concluding lines. The density of the conceptual presence is so trenchant to the story one need only open to a random page to be confronted with a topography that requires very little excavation in order to unearth something of substantial value. Of the theoretical concepts that saturate the novel, power dynamics is a multifarious theme that can be seen influencing the actions and development of each primary character, not the least of whom is Tomas. When analyzing the particular brand of power dynamics made famous by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, some interesting implications come to light. For instance, Tomas’ preferred application of power is Panoptic in nature—a form of authority that is contingent upon a perceiver and a perceived. By parsing the use of the Panoptic power structure present in the novel and by focusing on the notions that power is visible yet unverifiable, subjects are observed and analyzed, and rigorous classification begets standardization, some intriguing insights are uncovered; whereas it might at first appear that Tomas is one of the most powerful characters in the novel, by application of the Panoptic power structure, it can be seen that his power does not stem from an innate ability he alone champions but, rather, is produced from the social and political interactions in which he engages.

Michel Foucault’s seminal work Discipline and Punish, published in 1975, gave birth to ideas that proved to be influential in a few unexpected ways. Though of interest to historians and social commentators, Foucault’s publication also found itself being used—with vigorous interest and great success—by Literary Theorists housed in English departments across the globe. Indeed, Academe enthusiastically embraced Foucault’s theoretical musings and the longevity of his ideas speaks to the truth that is inherently trenchant within them. Though the main focus of Discipline and Punish is a tracing of the penal system through time and the influence and present day application of power structures, Foucault’s emphasis on and use of John Bentham’s Panopticon as a metaphor for modern power dynamics is a major point of import for most scholars of this work. To understand this power dynamic, one must first understand the tangible structure upon which the conceptual structure is built.

The architecture of the Panopticon, proposed as the ideal penal institution, is characterized by two structures that work in unison to create a single building. At the periphery of the building is a structure that is circular in construction, and at the core of this structure is a tower from which a panoramic view of the periphery structure is afforded. The center facing side of the periphery building faces the tower and is open so as to provide a watchman in the central tower complete access to the containment cells located in the periphery building. A watchman placed in the central tower structure can see every prisoner held in the containment cells located within the periphery building; in this way, a sense of complete transparency is created in relation to the inmates. However, this transparency is not shared by the inmates in relation to the watchman. Due to the nature of the construction, a prisoner cannot see the watchman within the central tower structure. Ultimately, a prisoner will have no way of knowing whether he is being watched; therefore, there remains the possibility that he is always being watched. Contained within this relationship—that of the observer to the observed—is Foucault’s notion of power: “The prisoner experiences a feeling of constant surveillance. And this is the very basis of Panoptic power. Panoptic power is the effect achieved through the realization that one is subjected to the gaze” (Crossley 403). Contained within this dynamic is one of the characteristics of the Panoptic power structure: power is visible yet unverifiable, for there is no way for a prisoner to know whether a watchman is truly observing.

Foucault takes this model of the Panopticon and applies it to social structures of power in order to flesh out and conceptualize modern power dynamics. It is important to note that Foucault does not believe that power is something a person possesses but rather something a person can utilize through social interactions. Power is an ever evolving entity that ebbs and flows through, and is contained within, relationships:
In short this power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the “privilege,” acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions — an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who are dominated. Furthermore, this power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who “do not have it”; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it has on them. (Foucault 550)

Now that the Panoptic power dynamic has been aptly dissected, an analysis and subsequent application of this structure can be seen in relation to Tomas and his seemingly inherent authority. From the beginning of the novel, Tomas’ serial philandering is abruptly apparent; however, the extent to which he engages in such an activity is grossly illustrated in the section entitled “Lightness and Weight.”

The power dynamic in which Tomas is engaged can be clearly seen within the social interactions that transpire at his place of employment and in the personal relationships he chooses to pursue. Tomas’ decision to become a physician, and even more precisely a surgeon, is a testament to his struggle to become an observer and not to fall prey to being observed. As the narrator in The Unbearable Lightness of Being explains, “Perhaps his deep-seated mistrust of people [. . .] had played its part in his choice of profession, a profession that excluded him from public display” (Kundera 183). As illustrated herein, Tomas’ drive to explore rather than be explored can be seen clearly; even his choice of specialization within the medical field attends to his strive to conquer others by utilizing an observational technique. The narrator continues, “[a] doctor (unlike a politician or an actor) is judged only by his patients and immediate colleagues, that is, behind closed doors, man to man. Confronted by the looks of those who judge him, he can respond at once with his own look, to explain or defend himself” (Kundera 183). Here, Tomas’ discomfort for being ‘judged by the looks of others’ attends to his desire to be a watcher instead of a subject of observation. Though this might not be the primary reason Tomas chose to practice medicine as a profession, it is quite telling concerning his appointed place within the power dynamic.

Concordant to the set of underpinnings underlying his choice of profession, Tomas’ drive for erotic liaisons with a myriad of women—exceeding some 200 in number—is a proclivity that holds substantial symbolic import for the story, and it is a character trait that aids in his acquisition and subsequent utilization of power. The narrator of the story extrapolates upon what Tomas seeks from his constant philandering—a pursuit that transcends mere physical pleasure and aids him in achieving the status of watchman in relation to his many mistresses’ places as “prisoners” in the Panoptic structure. Tomas’ desire for women is consequently a desire to discover the uniqueness that resides within each. His pursuit is to find the one miniscule element that is different from all the rest. “What is unique about the ‘I’ hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. . . . The individual ‘I’ is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered” (Kundera 199). This drive to conquer and analyze the individual uniqueness within each woman is once again a testament to Tomas’ desire to be the observer as opposed to the observed. Tomas’ quest for the “I” within each woman is meticulous at its very nature. Indeed, Tomas’ profession as a surgeon—a profession that provides practitioners with a power over the human form—is a similar expression of this nature. At the heart of Tomas’ drive is the need to dissect and analyze in search of something of importance within the human form.

Tomas’ womanizing vice is rooted in a longing for discovery, but the intent behind these discoveries is not as benign in nature as it might at first appear. By uncovering what makes each woman unique, Tomas is rendering each woman a subject of observation. “Tomas was obsessed by the desire to discover and appropriate that one-millionth part. . . . he longed to take possession of something deep inside of them. . . . So it was a desire not for pleasure [. . .] but for possession of the world [. . .] that sent him in pursuit of women” (Kundera 200). By leaving no rock unturned, in a metaphorical sense, Tomas resides in a power dynamic in which he possesses the power.

It is important to note that Tomas’ place in the power structure is not merely constructed by his short-lived, disposable flings with the women he considers less consequential. This power dynamic can also be witnessed within the relationship he shares with his most significant mistress, Sabina. During one clandestine encounter between the two, Sabina stops in front of a mirror amidst the process of disrobing. Sabina and Tomas observe her reflected figure. She is donned in nothing but undergarments and a bowler hat, and even though Sabina’s gestures suggests a playful countenance, brewing beneath the surface is something less jovial: “The fact that Tomas stood beside her fully dressed meant that the essence of what they both saw was far from good clean fun [. . .] it was humiliation” (Kundera 87). However, this defining moment in power relations does not end with the realization of humiliation but, rather, submittal to the structure. “But instead of spurning it, she proudly, provocatively played it for all it was worth, as if submitting of her own will to public rape; and suddenly, unable to wait any longer, she pulled Tomas down on the floor” (Kundera 87). For Sabina, the recognition of this power dynamic produced a surge of excitement. In this way, Tomas was the watcher and Sabina the watched. Tomas was observing Sabina from a relatively safe, fully clothed, location, and it was Sabina who was bearing herself to the world; it was Sabina whose relation to Tomas was translucent; it was Sabina who was a prisoner and forced to relinquish strategic positioning within the power dynamic.

The above examples are but a few illustrations of Panoptic power dynamics at work in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A more exhaustive approach to this topic would not stop at an analysis of Tomas’ position within the power dynamic and how it is nurtured through his social and political relations but would also focus on other significant characters within the text. Another avenue of approach—if one were to remain withing the confines of an analysis of Tomas—would be to include his relationship with his wife, Terezza, and how the power dynamic is structured in his primary relationship. Ultimately, in a metaphoric Panoptic structure, if Tomas’ mistresses are the prisoners who are subjected to observation and Tomas is the watchman, the questions remains: who watches the watchman?

Works Cited
Crossley, Nick.”The Politics of the Gaze: Between Foucault and Merleau-Ponty.” Human Studies 16.4 (1993): 399 – 419. Web. 13 Apr. 2012. This article provides an apt breakdown of Foucauldian Panoptic power dynamics. Though the information pertaining to “the gaze” and Merleau-Ponty is interesting, the main point of substance for this current usage is the added commentary on Panopticism.
Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” 1975. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 549-66. Print. The main focus of Discipline and Punish is the tracing of the penal system through time and the influence and present day application of power structures. The information presented on the Panopticon is used in a theoretical sense to analyze power structures within The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1984. Print. This novel is a philosophical inquiry into the themes of love, loss, lust and moral conundrum. The main characters grapple with their own moral standing and attempt to navigate a world that is at times simultaneously incredibly light and overbearingly heavy. This novel provides the backdrop to which the Panoptic power dynamic is applied.

Tiffany Anne Carpenter
Dr. Hobbs
Eng 435- Literary Criticism
16 April 2012
Mock Conference Panel: “Re/Deconstructing the Sexual Politics of Milan Kundera”
Personal and Political Sexuality in Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being
In her article on the “Politics of Domesticity,” Nancy Armstrong considers the role of female intellectual labor and the importance of how gender in relationship to domestic fiction is often overlooked. She argues that most theorists and critics of New Historicism tend to leave out the role of women and instead focus solely on economic and social histories in relationship to men and politics, leaving a large portion of innovative thought out of the equation, thought that comes from the inclusion of women and their domain of the personal and emergence of sexuality.
She defines her idea of domestic fiction as “gender-inflected writing” and points out that in examining Foucault’s terms of “discourse, power, sexuality, [and] discipline” there are flaws because of the power of this system being dependent upon forms of consciousness, unconscious desire, and subjectivity (570). Armstrong shows her hesitation with the ideas of Foucault because of his lack of focus on gender in politics and she aims to bring the role of women’s intellectual labor to the forefront. She suggests “that modern institutional cultures depend upon the separation of the political from the personal and that they produce and maintain this separation on the basis of gender” and goes on to highlight the importance of varying sexual roles and gender roles in a household, marriage, and even society as a whole and how men and women have been often defined specifically by gender (573). She closes by exclaiming that she is attempting to “represent the discourse of sexuality as deeply implicated in the shape of the novel” and that in the end, although it might seem a simple feminist critic, she is only trying to highlight the importance of examining fiction not only as literature in the text itself, but though various perspectives that include the broad range of considering gender differences throughout history, as well as cultural and class perspectives in relationship to those gender roles in society.
One of the works that we have considered throughout the semester, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera is a great example of how this type of gender focused critique can be applied.
For example, the questions of the Soviet idea of morality might be examined in relationship to personal desires and sexuality in respect to the characters of the work. Tomas, for example, is frequently finding new women to seduce and have affairs with, even in the midst of his marriage to Tereza because his views of love, lust, and sexual desire are separate from one another and his lifestyle and philosophy leaves him emotionally detached from the world around him. There is this exchange between people and their views of power; where control is established can often be related back to control in sexuality. Tereza wants power in a different way than Sabina in that respect; she wants control by desiring Tomas to be with her and her alone. She is this image of innocence and almost purity for Tomas, something that he can claim as his in one way and then continue to sleep around with other women to ensure his happiness in all realms of his personality and desire. Tereza wants control of her relationship with him and control of her body, wanting to limit the sexuality that she is trying to suppress because of her society and her psychological struggles with the image of her body. Sabina on the other hand, is submissive in how she reacts to the men around her in some ways by letting them take advantage of her body and use her sexually. However, she is controlling at the same time because she is strong and sexually independent, having sexual relationships with whomever she wants, whenever she wants and not thinking much of it. She acts on instincts and desires and can control her emotions enough to have sexual power within these relationships; it is almost as if she thrives on how inconsequential sex is to her and how she can dismiss her interactions as merely a game. This is an interesting philosophy for a woman be portrayed as embodying, especially for the time Kundera is writing. Like Armstrong mentions, the stereotypes and standards that society placed upon women would shun the lifestyle that Sabina is trying to lead through her sexual aggressiveness.
That approach might even be taken to another level in the consideration of how Sabina and Tereza view promiscuity in their society; Sabina has no problem sleeping around and finds sexual submission almost as a sense of freedom while Tereza has a predisposition to dislike the body, her body and the bodies of others, and feels almost ashamed and dirty as a result of sexual acts. For her, sexual desire is limited and almost harmful; the fact that her husband has affairs with other women and her “fling” with the man from the bar nearly destroys her internally because of her guilt and inability to cope with her own sexuality and the emergence of sexuality throughout the society around her with the people that she is constantly interacting with. She tries to avoid the focus of the sexual, and she ultimately suffers because of it because of how prevalent that emergence and focus, and even violence, of sexuality is around her, namely in her husband and his long-term mistress, Sabina.
It is also important to consider the female perspective in this continued relationship of power to the personal and the political by looking at the role of Sabina’s sexuality; how she handles relationships with others, her view of her own sexual identity and promiscuity, her view and understanding of the sexuality that is represented in those around her. A more in-depth examination might even look at Sabina’s perspective and fascination with the bowler hat and how it pertains to her in this way that she views it as this symbol of eroticism, sexual exploration and freedom, and even rebellion or betrayal. She uses this bowler hat as a way to leave behind her past and the conventions that might be seen in society; as a way to play up her sexual interactions with Tomas and allows him to overtake her in a sexual way, and even as a sense of almost having a separate identity when she wears the bowler hat to have sex with Tomas and Franz, leaving her inhibitions, emotions, and past behind her.
Another perspective that plays into the examination of the power struggle that comes from the role of sexuality in Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being might be that of Jacques Lacan when he writes about how our unconscious desires are not based on our background or our instincts, and that they are very elementary in nature, depending on the role of the signifier in the things we see around us. Without going into depth on Lacan’s interpretations of the signifier and signified formula, it is interesting to note the importance of language and desire that the characters have throughout the work.
For Tomas, Tereza, and Sabina, sexuality is most obviously the overarching issue that plays into the way that they live their lives and interact with the people around them. While Tomas and Sabina are more aggressive in following through with their desires, Tereza is much more restrained and tends to deny herself whatever unconscious desires she might have stirring. Because she has such a horrible past that has given her negative feelings and traumatic experiences in relationship to the image of body and to her sexuality, Tereza struggles to continue suppressing her sexuality and desires because she is unable to break through those barriers and cannot move past her internal conflicts. Tomas and Sabina, however, are much more overt when it comes to their desires and they act upon them with little to no thought or consideration for the consequences. They have a much easier time acting spontaneously on their instincts and personal desires without having the internal struggles of what happens next, who they might be affecting in the process, etc. Instead, they are much more likely to behave based solely on their personal desires and wants and do things as they see fit in the moment. They might suffer or struggle with those decisions later, but living in the moment is much more their style, especially when it comes to their sexuality. In this way, Kundera uses these characteristics and extensive, graphic language to describe these scenes and the development of these characters to establish them and showcase the way that they operate in their environment and the way that they operate based off of their unconscious--which they essentially turn conscious because they are aware of them--desires, highlighting the importance of that language as Lacan points out.
Throughout The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera weighs in on the question of sexuality in terms of how it emerges for his characters personally and how it emerges and is influenced politically. They struggle with internal conflicts, their unconscious desires, and individual motivations with how they react with others, how they form relationships, and how they use their sexuality. In addition, they struggle with the suppression of the Soviet society that traps them into behaving in certain ways because of societal and political restrictions. Some characters are stronger than others with their use of sexuality and use it as a way to escape the political unrest that they feel trapped in and others nearly crumble with it and limit their sexuality even more. For Tomas and Sabina, their emotional detachment allows them to take their personal sexuality and make it political by giving them the upper hand in the power struggle. Tereza, on the other hand, suppresses her sexuality and is submissive to society around her, forcing her to face her internal struggles in a stronger light because of her inability to detach herself from what’s happening around her and her inability to find her own identity.
Annotated Bibliography
Armstrong, Nancy. “Some Call it Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity.” 1990. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 567-83. Print.
In her article on the “Politics of Domesticity,” Nancy Armstrong considers the role of female intellectual labor and the importance of how gender in relationship to domestic fiction is often overlooked. Her arguments provide a foundation for my research on the role of gender in Kundera’s portrayal of female sexuality.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.
Milan Kundera’s work on the Unbearable Lightness of Being is a novel that considers the role of lightness and weight in the philosophical world and applies it to the characters of Tomas, Tereza, and Sabina. He explores the meaning of life, theories of Nietzsche, the role of fate, political commentary, and even the emergence of sexuality in the Soviet realm.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud.” 1957. Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 447-61. Print.
Lacan’s article is an interesting source for my consideration on how the use of language and the role of unconscious desire plays out in the work of Milan Kundera because Lacan examines the role of psychoanalytic theory in terms of the use of language and reason through the formula of the signifier and the signified and what that means for human nature.

Brooke King
Dr. Hobbs
ENG 435
2 April 2012
Electrifying Sabina’s Love
Ever since Sigmund Freud introduced the psychological concept of the Electra complex. According to Freud, girls can develop the Electra complex during the phallic stage, also known as the psychosexual stage of development, where they begin to realize that boys have penises and girls do not, and as such, she develops penis envy and transfers her love from her mother to her father (Bernstein 429). Many scholars, like Sheila Powell have been connecting the Freud definition of the Electra complex to the myth about Electra. The obsession about the myth of Electra extends far back into history, where the Greek poetics of Sophocles and Euripides used the myth to create tragic plays and poetic verse (Powell 156). However, Freud’s interpretation of the Electra myth brought about the psychoanalytical approach of interpreting latent incestuous sexual desires of children towards their parent of the opposite gender. In Milan Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, his character Sabina, although erotically in touch with her physical needs, has an underlying sexual drive that at times is projected from one person to another, much like the Electra myth. Sabina exhibits several latent sexual tendencies for her grandfather, which produces a reflective desire for male companionship in the form of sexual fantasies, some of which surround the use of her grandfather’s bowler hat.
In the beginning of the book, Sabina is Tomas’s mistress, but the sexual undertone of the nature their relationship leaves Sabina in need of a real connection with Tomas. In Sabina’s letter to Tomas, she writes, “I want to make love to you in my studio. It will be like a stage surrounded by people. The audience won’t be allowed up close, but they won’t be able to take their eyes off us…” (Kundera 16). Sabina suffers from a part of the Electra complex that deals with adolescent feelings. As Powell puts it, Sabina’s ability to contain her feelings is limited by her capacity to understand the situation around her (158). Sabina has not yet fully developed psychologically and because of her adolescent tendencies, she must act out her fantasies, much like Electra acts out her rage on her mother by taunting her mother with sexually perverse feelings towards her father. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology, in the pre-oedipal stages of a girl’s development, the girl attaches with her mother, assimilating that she is a female and as such mimics her mother’s actions (Matsumoto). Betty de Shong Meador points out that a woman needs to make this attachment and can return to this identification, after she has identified and has worked through her experience with her father, understanding how the relationship between males and females works (123). This is the stage where girls assimilate feelings for the opposite sex and where they ascribe their father’s attributes towards finding a mate based on the ascribed attributes. Yet, it appears within the novel that Sabina lacks the certain foundation needed for her relationships with the opposite sex and that she has not fully matured out of this stage, partly due to the fact that she is attracted to the same sex, Tereza.
Instead of acting out her feelings of intimacy, complex rage, and abandonment issues towards her grandfather, Sabina acts out against Tomas’s wife Tereza (Kundera 28). Sabina taunts Tereza by continuing her affair with Tomas, seeking out friendship with Tereza, and having a sexually explicit encounter with Tereza at her studio (Kundera 66). Yet, Sabina’s latent sexual desires stem from a familial male figure. Tomas has has replaced Sabina’s grandfather and Tereza has replaced the female counter. In a sense, Sabina has found the female and male identifiers for which she can displace her feelings of abandonment and rage. Because Sabina lacks a foundational support for her crossover back to her post-oedipal self, Sabina is not allowed to transfer over and thus, is stuck in a liminal state of adolescence that is fed by her adult desire for sexual contact. Sabina exhibits the misunderstanding that occurs within the adolescent stage where the image of her heterosexual self is distorted by her relationship with her grandfather. Because this tie to her grandfather is so strong, Sabina cannot let go of her grandfather’s love and as such, a distorted incestuous tie with her grandfather developed. Yet, her displaced aversion and compulsion towards the opposite sex indicates that Sabina has displaced further her love for her grandfather by projecting it onto her lovers and displacing her adolescent aversion for the same sex by dominating a male space, creating a male sub-identity, when in contact with the same sex.
Throughout the novel, Sabina references her grandfather as an important and loving figure. Yet, the one object that she associates with her grandfather is his bowler hat, which she uses to act out her sexual fantasies with Tomas, Tereza, and Franz. Powell states that Electra’s “idealization of her father seem to be an attempt to compensate for [a] painful abandonment… it is also an attempt to draw attention to a young woman who needs to act in accord with her feelings” (158). For Sabina, the bowler hat symbolizes her incestuous love for her grandfather, and by using it in all her fantasies, she is able to act out her latent sexual desires for her grandfather. In addition, the hat allows her to express her need to act in accordance with the sexual feelings of repression that she is feeling for her grandfather and her male partners. However, it is interesting to note that in the rendezvous with Tereza, Sabina only points out the hat, but does not don the hat on her head. “Next to the bed stood a small table, and on the table the model of a human head… Sabina’s wig stand sported a bowler hat rather than a wig, ‘It used to belong to my grandfather,’ she said with a smile” (Kundera 64). The hat is merely alluded to in the presence of Tereza because she has an aversion to the same sex as part of her misidentification with the same sex due to her distorted development in the pre-oedipal/ Electra stage of adolescence. The incestuous sexual feelings towards her grandfather are projected onto her male lovers and not onto the same sex because in order for Sabina to move forward with her life, she must have a male counterpart to help further herself, whether it is via career or personal life. It is because her grandfather had been absent from her life and “all he’d left behind was [the] bowler hat,” (Kundera 65) Sabina has displaced issues with her grandfather. She subsequently uses the bowler hat to transfer her desire for her grandfather onto her lovers. In the myth, Electra must have the same male counterpart in her life in order for her to find a suitor, marry, and have children. Electra projects her desire to have a male counterpart onto her father and in turn onto her brother, once her father is dead and gone. Yet, it is because this male counterpart does not exist wholly in a suitable capacity, Electra finds rage for her mother’s murderous act. Sabina similarly does the same because of the males in her life are her lovers and are not a suitable replacement for her grandfather. As such, she projects her rage out of Tereza because Tereza is holding onto Tomas with their marriage. Because Tomas is married to Tereza, Sabina cannot have him as a suitable male counterpart. Sabina further displays the Electra complex of same sex rage out on Tereza by following Tomas to Western Europe and rekindling her love affair with Tomas. While Sabina does not exhibit rage against Tereza violently, her displaced need for attention from male lovers stems from her need to be loved by her grandfather, as well as the fact that she does not assimilate herself as wholly female/woman.
In the novel, Sabina has a hard time placing her love on the appropriate sex, as well as having a hard time defining her own sexuality. Within the Electra complex, the division of the self occurs when a girl cannot differentiate, in what Powell calls, the inner self and the outer self: “During the time [when] a girl is acquiring knowledge, she may be taken up with the outside world. As she develops physically, her personal psychological preoccupation tends towards the inner world and the world of feeling, so she [tends to feel] pulled in two directions” (167). In terms of Sabina and her psychological development, she has not yet reached maturation and because of this, she feels disconnected with her outside self, or rather, the outside world that her inner self perceives. Because of this disconnection, Sabina cannot relate to her gender, causing confusing in sexuality and in turn an attraction to both sexes. Freud saw this as the unparalleled link between a girl’s sexual development and the bond between father and daughter (Bernstein 429). However, beyond the link of immaturity in sexual emotion is the process of defining ones sexuality. This is developed in the psychological adolescent stage where Freud insists the Electra complex occurs. Even as Sabina is stuck in this pre-oedipal stage of psychological adolescent maturation, she is still highly susceptible to the confusion and disconnect from sexual orientation that Powell suggests happens to girls/ women who become stuck in this stage. In the novel, Sabina reflects on her identity as a woman:
Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume the correct attitude to her unchosen fate. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it. (Kundera 89)
Sabina, for the most part, is lost in her sexual orientation due in part to her immature psychological development. As such, her feelings become confused and she seeks out attention in order to try to come to terms with her sexuality and psychological need for unavailable men. This is done in order to cover up the need for her absent father figure, her grandfather. In the myth, Electra acts out in an attempt for her to draw attention. Yet, by doing so, Electra is able to seduce undesirable men, such as her father and brother. Sabina, for all her erotic sexual fantasies, desires men who she cannot have by acting out, but her desires are misplaced.
While Freud calls this misplaced desire penis envy (Bernstein 429), it goes much deeper into the core of the psyche, where women differentiate from men emotionally. Freud says that in attempt to avoid disapproval from her mother, a girl will indentify and imitate her mother, and thus form the basis for her superego (Bernstein 429). Yet, where Freud starts, Powell continues: “Woman-as-Electra is undeveloped as a woman who can think for herself because she is enmeshed in a patriarchal culture with which she colludes by feeling that only a man can change the world for her and help her through the struggle” (171). For Sabina, the moment of realization comes when she realizes she is a woman in the sense of the word, but quit unique in compositional makeup. She is freer than the woman Powell speaks of, yet, Sabina seems trapped the notion of having a constant male companion or lover to help her through her life. Ultimately, this is why she rejects Franz (Kundera 91). Sabina is not in love with any of her sexual partners because none of them could measure up to the admiration and displaced love that Sabina had for her grandfather. Each lover lacked something that Sabina needed from a man. Her rejection of men and the collusion of feelings towards male lovers and her grandfather is what ultimately brings about Sabina’s understanding of her sexuality and her need for help. Sabina conclusively found that the only help she needed rested in herself. Sabina realized that the betrayal lay within herself and that in order for her to come to terms with her feelings and her identity, she would have to recognize that she was in fact the problem. In a fit of intoxication, Sabina came to realize that, “The road had to end somewhere! Sooner or later she would have to stop herself!” (Kundera 98). While intoxicated, Sabina revisited her childhood despairs, gradually noticing and owning up to her betrayal of feelings towards the males within her life, namely her father (Kundera 98). However, this gradual ownership of feelings allows Sabina to develop into her post-oedipal self. After coming to terms with her feelings of confusion and disconnect from her sexual orientation, Sabina confronts the only man that has ever truly loved her, Franz : “She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women, Don’t let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong!” (Kundera 98). Sabina finally is able to own her need for the desired traits in men that resembled her father’s and grandfather’s traits. By accepting them as part of her psychological reality, she allows her full maturation to occur. While her feelings are still congealed with her sexual desires for male companionship, her desires are more in tune with the role of women in her age and are less masculine in nature. She has fully developed beyond the Electra complex because she is no longer struggling with her sexual disconnection. She has fulfilled the role as a woman because she now sees herself a representative value rather than the “signified one of two human sexes” (Kundera 89). Towards the end of the novel, Sabina finally connects with her the psychological identification as a woman and begins to imitate the role of woman, forming her superego around her newfound sense of self (Kundera 256).
While both Electra and Sabina seem to be lost in their placement of desire and attention, both exhibit latent sexual desire for their father figures. Electra emulated her needs and desires onto her father because of the need for a father figure to help her through life. Yet, Sabina emulated her desires onto her grandfather’s bowler hat because of his inadequate ability to be there for Sabina. As a result, Sabina projected her desires for her grandfather onto her male lovers. Though Sabina may not fully have the incestuous Electra complex, she does exhibit some of the overall arching characteristics of the Electra complex, which explains her need for the bowler hat and for some of the more peculiar and erotic scenes within Kundera’s novel.

Works Cited
Bernstein, Douglas A. Essentials of Psychology. 5th ed. Mason: Cengage Learning, 2010. 425-59. Print.
de Shong Meador, B. “Forward into the Past.” Dreams in Analysis. Eds. N. Schwartz-Salent and M. Stien. Wilmette, Ill.:Chiron. 1990.121-53. Print.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harperperennial, 2009. Print.
Matsumoto, David Ricky. Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology. Cambridge University Press, 2009. ebook Collection(EBSCOhost). Web. 29 march 2012.
Powell, Sheila. "Electra: The Dark Side of the Moon." Journal of Analytical Psychology 38.2, 1993: 155-74. Print.