61 pages • 2-hour read
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Soul and Body”
Part 2, Chapters 1-7 Summary
The narrator pauses his story here to note that his characters never actually lived. Rather, they were born out of ideas: “Thomas was born of the saying ‘Einmal ist keinmal.’ Tereza was born out of the rumbling of a stomach” (39). When Tereza first appeared at Tomáš’s flat, she hadn’t eaten all day, and her stomach was rumbling. This reminds the narrator of the body/soul duality that, although it was once a mystery to humans, is now easily explained by science. And yet, despite in-depth biomedical knowledge, humans still cannot escape their bodies.
Tereza sees herself “through her body” (41). As a young woman, she spent long hours in front of the mirror, not out of vanity but because she thought that looking at her body allowed her to glimpse her soul. Occasionally, instead of seeing through to her soul, she saw only her body and was dismayed to see her mother’s features reflected in her own. Tereza’s mother was a deeply unhappy woman. Ultimately, she left both her husband and young Tereza for another man. Bereft, Tereza’s father grew careless with his criticism of the communist government and was imprisoned. Tereza was sent to live with her mother and stepfather. Their household was difficult, and Tereza struggled.
Although Tereza was an intelligent young woman, her mother took her out of school at age 15 and found her a job as a waitress. Tereza surrendered her wages to her mother and took on the bulk of their household management in addition to caring for her young siblings. Her mother was a loud, uncouth woman fond of wandering around their home naked. This mortified Tereza, who valued privacy and found her mother’s lack of self-awareness and modesty shameful. To the narrator, Tereza appears as a “continuation of the gesture by which her mother cast off her life as a young beauty” (46).
Part 2, Chapters 8-13 Summary
Tereza meets Tomáš at the restaurant where she works. He immediately stands out to her because he is reading a book. This is unusual in her provincial town and, a book lover herself, Tereza takes note of the handsome stranger with an open book on his table. Beethoven, a favorite musician of hers, plays on the restaurant radio. He gives her his card and tells her to contact him if she is ever in Prague. Reminiscing about this years later, Tomáš will be struck at the role that chance and coincidence played in their first meeting. Tereza, too, is moved by coincidence, although in her case, she is prone to searching for hidden meaning in coincidences: Because Beethoven had been playing when she met Tomáš, because he had been reading a book in a town of so few readers, Tereza couldn’t help but feel that fate had drawn the two together.
Moved by her chance encounter, Tereza travels to Prague to see Tomáš. She spends a week with him in his flat, although she comes down with the flu and spends much of that time ill in bed. Shortly thereafter, she returns with a suitcase containing all her possessions.
Part 2, Chapters 14-22 Summary
In Prague and working as an assistant in the darkroom of a local weekly newspaper—a job procured for her by Sabina—Tereza is finally able to make use of her intelligence and immerse herself in all of Prague’s cultural offerings. Sabina introduces her to the work of several famous photographers and explains to her why their images are compelling. Tereza studies these images, and soon her own work is appearing in the newspaper whose darkroom she had been working in. She is promoted to staff photographer.
Tomáš continues his erotic friendships, and although Tereza tries to ignore them, the infidelities deeply trouble her. She has nightmares. She feels insignificant and draws a parallel between her mother, who perceived all bodies as equally unremarkable, and Tomáš, who seems to draw no distinction between Tereza’s body and those of his lovers.
Tomáš encourages her to strike up a friendship with Sabina. Tereza and Sabina get together at Sabina’s flat so that Tereza can photograph her, and Sabina shows Tereza her artwork. She is working on a series of paintings titled “Behind the Scenes” that reveal the confluence of two worlds. They contain realistic images paired with hidden ones. Tereza immediately understands their meaning and is impressed with Sabina’s artistic eye. She notices Sabina’s bowler hat and asks to photograph her in it. Tereza suggests nude shots of Sabina, and after she’s taken a few, Sabina suggests nude shots of Tereza. She issues the command “Strip!” which is a common directive of Tomáš’s, and Tereza sees that the two women are joined by the man whom they share.
Part 2, Chapters 23-29 Summary
The Russian invasion provides Tereza with deeply important subject matter, and she spends entire days photographing the soldiers, their tanks, and the protests in Prague. Some of her photographs are printed in Czechoslovakia, and others she sends abroad for publication in the foreign press. In Zurich, however, she is unsuccessful at getting more of her images into print. Although the invasion is ongoing, the West has moved on, and its attention is no longer on Czechoslovakia.
Part 2 Analysis
This portion of the text pauses the narrative and retells it from Tereza’s perspective—a nonlinear method of storytelling that allows the reader to observe the same set of events from multiple perspectives. This narrative structure is another reflection of the text’s commitment to asking rather than answering questions: The narrator is not going to provide an easy answer to their original thought experiment, nor are they going to present their story from a single perspective. In this section of the text, the narrator even ventures into metafiction, reminding the reader that Tomáš and Tereza did not “really” live, and that they can be conceived of as figures born out of a set of ideas: Tomáš, Tereza, and their story is an elaborate way for the narrator to explore themes such as Lightness and Weight, Totalitarian Repression, and Leitmotif and its Interpretation.
This section fills in additional detail about Tereza’s past, with particular attention paid to Tereza’s dysfunctional mother. Tereza’s mother’s immodesty and lack of respect for privacy create in Tereza an intense need for privacy and a revulsion at her own body as an impediment to the purity of the spirit. Because her mother is so often naked in their home, and Tereza sees a reflection of her mother’s features in her own, she associates her body with vulgarity and commonness. She wants to look at herself in the mirror and see only her soul reflected, but she is rarely successful in this endeavor. Tereza’s view of the body mirrors the one she attributes to Tomáš: In her mind, his many sexual partners indicate that he too sees the female form as basic, vulgar, and interchangeable. This is one reason why his infidelities are so painful to her: They confirm what she already fears—that her body is an object no different from others. Later, when the perspective shifts back to Tomáš, it will become clear that Tomáš seeks difference in his sexual partners, but Tereza, at this point, does not know this. Tereza’s relationship with her mother is one of many ways in which, in this novel, private relationships enact the same conflicts that occur between the individual and the state. Under the Totalitarian Repression of the Soviet Union at this time, privacy is a precious and hard-to-find resource, just as it is in Tereza’s family home. The watchful gaze of her mother is ever present, just like the ever-watching eye of the communist state. Tereza’s intense need for privacy develops as the result of her mother’s constant scrutiny, but this can be read as an allegory for the pervasive gaze of the communist government.
Part 2 also establishes the importance of Leitmotif and the Interpretation of Life, for it is here that readers learn about the motifs of Beethoven and books in Tereza’s life and come to understand how much her interpretation of the chance occurrence of such motifs drives her decision-making process. When she meets Tomáš in the bar where she is employed, she sees a relationship between the two as an inevitability because he is reading a book at his table while Beethoven plays in the background. She interprets this series of coincidences as a sign and chooses to pursue Tomáš accordingly.
Tereza’s dreams, all of which are nightmares about Tomáš’s infidelities, also emerge as an important motif within the broader narrative, and they speak both to the difficulties of her marriage to Tomáš and of the extent to which she embodies weight. Her dreams themselves are a burden to Tereza; they are a sign of deep-seated psychological distress. Additionally, they serve as a reminder to Tomáš that, for him, Tereza herself is a burden: The two should be rendered incompatible by their divergent understandings of sex, love, and intimacy, and yet they are attempting to forge a relationship in the face of these differences. To Tomáš, although he loves Tereza and chooses to remain with her, their relationship is a source of weight rather than lightness.
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