How Weakness is Stronger than Strength, Danielle Sison

Tereza realized that she was at fault for the life Tomas led. "Her weakness was aggressive and kept forgiving him to capitulate until eventually he lost his strength and was transformed in the rabbit in her arms." (310)

I never thought of it that way, but she did manipulate him with her weakness. But she is also strong, she endured the smell of Tomas' infidelities. She dealt with it throughout their marriage and she still managed to love him. She endured the night terrors caused by Tomas' womanizing, the pain it caused her. If that is not strength, then what is?

The Dramatic Irony of Simon, Danielle Sison

I refer back to the scene where Tomas' son, Simon, and Tomas first meet. Simon urged Tomas to sign the petition, Tomas only agreed in fear that his relationship with Simon is at stake. But this is where the dramatic irony takes place, Tomas decides not to sign it, thinking that he has ruined his relationship with Simon. But it turns out that "Simon never liked his mother." (271)

"He never felt angry with his father, because he did not wish to ally himself with his mother, who continually maligned the man...The only reason he became involved with the big-chinned former editor was that the editor's fate reminded him of his father's."

"He [Simon]...liked his father."

Both were willing to impress the other, however they did not know that. Simon did not truly care as much for the regime, only to impress his father with it, due to Tomas' Oedipus article. Tomas only complied to sign the petition at first was for the son, to not to ruin any existing thread of their relationship. They both, however did not know, they both wanted each other.

The Extremes are not universes apart, Danielle Sison

The extremes of life are not universes apart. This is made clear through the example of one character, Yakov.

"Rejection and privilege, happiness and woe-no one felt more concretely than Yakov how interchangeable opposites are, how short the step from one pole of human existence to the other." (243)

"He, who bore on his shoulders a drama of the highest order (as fallen angel ad Son of God). to undergo judgment not for something sublime (in the realm of God and the angels) but for shit? Were the very highest of drama and the very lowest so vertiginously close?"(243)

This brings me back to Tomas, perhaps weight and lightness is also so close. Tomas lived half his life in his womanizing lifestyle. He was free. In yet, his split decision to see Tereza changed him forever. She became his weight, she became his wife. His life changed in one decision, this only supports the idea that the two extremities of life are but next to each other.

The characters are a mere reflection of the author, Danielle Sison

This particular passage stood out, it is what Ms. Sobrero has always been saying.

"characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author things no one else has discovered or said something essential about. But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?"

So all the characters in this book is a reflection of the author, a piece of the author.

"Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented." (p221)

Tomas and son and the weigh of decision, Danielle Sison

Tomas and his son meet for the first time in years. His son wanted Tomas to sign a petition for amnesty of the political prisoners.

"Tomas suddenly saw that what was really at stake in the scene they were playing was not the amnesty of political prisoners; it was his relationship with his son. If he signed, their fates would be united ad Tomas would be more or less obliges to befriend him; if he hailed to sign, their relations would remain null as before, though now not so much by his own will as y the will of his son, who would renounce his father for his cowardice." (216)

Here we see the weighty decision Tomas is faced. The fact, that he at first complied to signing, shows the transition that Tomas is making. He is shifting his life from the style of lightness to the life style of weight. Although, in the end Tomas did not sign the petition, the scene shows his slow transition to value.

Yet another Cycle, Danielle Sison

There's another similarity between the infidelties of Tereza and of Tomas.

When Tereza made love to the engineer man, she found that love and sex can be independent of each other. After her discovery was done, she went to his bathroom to wash and think. She felt like she was being watched in the bathroom.

Tomas made love to a giraffe looking woman. "He managed to get her out [of the bathroom]. As he washed and urinated into the washing...he had the feeling she was running back and forth outside the bathroom, looking for a way to break in. When he turned off the water ad the flat was suddenly silent, he felt he was being watched. He was nearly certain that there was a peephole somewhere in the bathroom door and that her beautiful eye was squinting through it." (206)

Why they felt like they were being watched, I don't know.

Tomas' obsession with one-millionth part, Danielle Sison

"Tomas was obsessed by the desire to discover and appropriate that one-millionth part; he saw it as the core of his obsession. He was not obsessed with women; he was obsessed with wha tin each of the in unimaginable, obsessed, in other words, with the one-millionth part that makes a woman dissimilar to others of her sex." (p200)

Here is where the dilemma begins. I begin to wonder why Tomas still loves Tereza, she came to him all exposed and vulnerable. The character even suffers from an internal conflict of conformity. She does not know what separates her from other women. She has constant nightmares about herself, naked with other women, marching in a circle. Her voice drowned out by the sing song voice of other women. She is indistinguishable. Her mother raised her to believe that her body is just like the rest of other women. So why then does Tomas stay with Tereza?

The Narrator isn't omnipotent at all, Danielle Sison

I have assumed that the 3rd person narrator is all knowing, it knew every intimate thought and detail of each character. I was shocked when the narrator asked questions about the character.

"Even so the way he rushed into his decision seems rather odd to me. Could it perhaps conceal something else, something deeper that escaped his reasoning?" ( p194)

This comes to play with one of the main motifs of the book: opposites and duality.

The narrator then becomes an important symbol also. It's suppose to be all knowing and omniscient, but how can he truly be a 3rd person narrator if it itself, must ask questions about the characters? The narrator is not truly all knowing, therefore he cannot truly be 3rd person. It is either you are all knowing or you're not. But in yet, he is a combination a duality of opposition. It is a 3rd person narrator who is not all knowing.

The dilemma with 2 Extremes part 2, Danielle Sison

This particular passage struck out to me. I like extremities, I like things in black and white. I don't like to waste time with games or pondering about the "gray" To me, extremities is certainty, its solid, with no doubts. It is limiting, but there's a beauty to limiting. If you are limited, everything becomes boundless. If you choose to seclude yourself from the world, the whole world becomes a fresh entity, a new concept, an idea. So in a way, if you are limited, you are also unlimited. Life for example, if you prefer one genre of music, you limit yourself from other genres. But, if you find a particular song you like in a different genre, a whole new style of music is introduced to you and its fresh, then the music field becomes boundless.

Sabina on the other hand, does not like extremities. I never saw it the way she did.

"Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism." (p94)

Whenever Franz made love to Sabina, he wold close his eyes and Sabina despised that. But Franz saw it as "himself disintegrated and dissolved into the infinity of his darkness, himself becoming infinite." (p95)

In other words, he becomes boundless. But, it makes sense how two extremities can be limiting, the way Sabina saw it. Both pure light and pure darkness are blinding. But if you're blind, how infinite your imaginations can be... or maybe limiting if you been blind your whole life. If you're blind your whole life, where is the source of inspiration of images conjured? Where do you start to figure how a person looks like? What can be your base point? So maybe blindness is not at all boundless, but limiting.

Sabina is a Drifter, Danielle Sison

So far, as I read the book, I am convinced that Sabina is a drifter. She leads the life of insignificant lightness. She does not like the concept of eternal return.

"'Its a vicious circle,' Sabina said, 'People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder. But because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still.'" (p93)

This quote is a simple example of eternal return, if she cannot like the dilemma that music ensues, how can she live the life eternal return? She can't and thus her character leads a life of lightness. She is like Tomas, they both had many lovers, she was special to Tomas because she did not hold any demands or promises against Tomas.

Sabina's Old Black Bowler Hat, Danielle Sison

This is the second time the black bowler hat has emerged in the book. Im beginning to think that the bowler hat holds some symbolic value, but I am not sure what it means.

First Instance:

"Sabina's wig stand sported a bowler hat rather than a wig. 'It used to belong to my grandfather,' she said with a smile." (p64)

A scene where Tereza comes to visit Sabina at her place, taking pictures of Sabina in the nude.

Second Instance:

"Near the mirror stood a wig stand with an old black bowler hat on it. She bent over, picked up the hat, and put it on her head. The image in the mirror was instantaneously trandsormed: suddenly it was a woman in her undergarments, a beautiful, distant, indifferent woman with a terrible out-of-placed bowler hat on er head, holding the hand of a man [Tomas] in a gray suit and a tie." (p85)

A scene where Tomas and Sabina were in one of their many rendevouz. Sabina stands naked in front of the mirror with the hat, while holding Tomas' hand in his suit. It was apparently a sign of her originality. "The lingerie enhanced the charm of her femininity, while the hard masculine hat denied it, violated and ridiculed it." (p87)

Tereza and Sabina has something in common, they both strive for their own originality.

Coincidence is artificial, not real, Danielle Sison

Reading how Tomas and Tereza met, made me think about the status of "coincidence." I concluded that coincidence is only in the state of mind, coincidence does not exist. If it does exist then absolutely everything is a coincidence. Its a coincidence that I am sitting on my bed, typing this blog.

Events of Tomas and Tereza's 1st meet:

" surface of her face reflected the crew of the soul charging up from below... her body sagged under the eight of the beers on the tray" (p47)

"His outsider statues raides him above the rest. Something else raised him above the others as well: he had an open book on his table...In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood."

"At that moment, the radio happened to be playing...Beethoven." (p49) Beethoven holds some significance to Tereza.

"You're in room six and my shift ends at six." (p50)

These are factors that hold significance to Tereza and Tereza only. To an outsider, meeting like this in Tereza's shoes, these factors would hold no significance and therefore would go on unnoticable, but these factors would have occurred anyways. It is only a coincidence because it happened to Tereza. Makes sense? So she then calls it a coincidence.

Body vs Soul, Danielle Sison

"Tereza was therefore born of a situation which brutality reveals the irreconcilable duality of body and soul, that fundamental human experience." (p 40)

Tereza was born in a situation of polar opposites. Her body became the cage to her soul, her soul's weight. The narrator describes the soul and body as separate entities, the body is nothing but a vessel of the body, but the body can also be the reflection of one's soul.

Tereza "thought she saw her soul shining through the features of her face." (p41)

She is then differentiated by the other characters by her being born in opposition and duality. I expect to see a transformation of her character as the story progresses from weight to lightness, or at least she will cease to be a burden to Tomas.

The Roles Exchanged, Danielle Sison

Tereza left Tomas in Zurich and went to Prague. She believed that if she left her husband, she would be "freeing" him of her burden. Upon discovering her leave, Tomas went after her, left his profession, and went back to Prague.

"Tomas was desperately unhappy and had a bad stomachache." (p77)

"Her first thought was that he had come back because of her; because of her, he had changed his destiny. Now he would no longer be responsible for her, now she was responsible for him." (p77)

I find it amusing that the roles have changed, yet its another viscious cycle. This book is filled with repetition. In the beginning of the book, Tereza came to Tomas. She came to him, with her stomach growling and hurting. She came to him sick. In the middle of the night, Tomas would look at her and see her weak and in need of protection. Now when Tereza leaves him and he follows her, he comes sick in the stomach. Tereza also looks at him in the middle of the night, thinking how she is now responsible for him, how he is the child. They're roles had switched.

The Dilemma with 2 Extremes, Danielle Sison

Another motif of the book: polar opposites

"On the surface, an intelligible lie, underneath, the unintelligible truth" (p63)

Sabina's painting always consisted of the two extremes like past and present

Tereza's life was split by day and night. In the day, she was protected by the love of Tomas, but at night, she was subjected to her night terrors. It's a place that Tomas cannot reach, a place where Tomas infidelities become a problem.

Because Conformity is Inescapable, Danielle Sison

"Your body is just like all other bodies; you have no right to shame...no reason to hide something that exists in millions of identical copies...Tereza had seen nudity as a sign of concentration camp uniformity, a sign of humiliation." (p 57)

"He [Tomas], sent Tereza to join them...she had come to escaper her mother's world...But he, too, had drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them alike..." (p58)

Tereza went to escape the conformity her mother raised her with, but conformity followed her to Tomas. But in the beginning of the book, the omniscient narrator distinguished Tomas' love for Tereza in compared to the others. He loved Tereza, the other women were only of physical relations. Through this, the author is able to create the motif of the metaphysical existence of love. Love is not existing in physical engagements with others, but a separate being. Love and sex are separate and independent entities.

That's Very Novelistic of You by Danielle Sison

One of the characters in the book, Tereza, is reading a novel. In her book, a girl Anna meats Vronsky at a railway station where someone is run over by a train. At the end of Tereza's novel, the book ends with Anna throwing herself under train.

"This symmetrical composition-the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end-may seem quite 'novelistic' to you"

The ironic part about this quote is that the book where this quote is contained is a novel itself. It is a novel based on eternal return, where life is a cycle. It forshadows the structure of the whole book, as if it is not obvious in the table of contents.