The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Summary Sparknotes

The unbearable lightness of being.

The unbearable lightness of being summary sparknotes.

The prague spring officially began on january 5 1968 with the election of alexander dubcek as the first secretary of the communist party of czechoslovakia. The first part called lightness and weight begins with friedrich nietzsche s idea of the eternal return and with what nietzsche calls einmal ist keinmal. The unbearable lightness of being is a novel by milan kundera that was first published in 1984. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of czech society during the communist period from the prague spring to the soviet invasion of 1968.

The unbearable lightness of being mainly takes place in prague in the years 1960 and 1970. The unbearable lightness of being takes place before during and after the prague spring a period of mass protest against czechoslovakia as a communist state after world war ii. The unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera is a novel told in seven parts. This second section of the unbearable lightness of being suggests that perhaps lightness and heaviness are not polar opposites.

Tomas falls in love with tereza partly because he wants to feel heaviness. Tomas and tereza represent different sides of the dichotomy but both are capable of feeling the pull of the other side and hence fall in love. If man only has the opportunity to try one path to make one decision he cannot return to take a different path and then. Kundera wonders if any meaning or weight can be attributed to life since there is no eternal return.

The unbearable lightness of being opens with a philosophical discussion of lightness versus heaviness. Basically this means that something that happens only once might as well not have happened.