The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Character Analysis

Tomas is a fictional character that appears in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” which was written by Milan Kundera. He is the main protagonist in the novel and can be depicted as a round character because of the fact that he is going to be influenced by his wife, Teresa, to change. He is considered a brilliant surgeon in Prague, but unfortunately he lost his job, his family, and was divorced from his first wife. Afterwards, he lost contact with his family including his son which is why we can see from the beginning of the novel that he is used to being alone and never thought about getting remarried again. He is also described to be a person with a great lustful personality. He is a womanizer, and one could see at the start that he simply
Knowing that he is already married to Teresa, why does he still have sexual intercourse with his other mistresses? He argued that, “Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman) (Part 5, Ch 6)." We then learned that Tomas is only emotionally faithful to Teresa and to his marriage. Teresa’s presence has affected the life of Tomas in the sense that he needs to take care of his wife now. The fact that he married her and bought her a dog named Karenin would mean that he loves and cares for her. It also looks as if Karenin became their child in the story because in the latter part of the novel, we can see that she is the only one that they both have to take care of. In my perspective, the dog helped a lot in binding Teresa and Tomas together, making them suit each other. We can see how a light person, Tomas, and a weighted person, Teresa, are be able to make up each other’s needs and wants in order to balance their life’s lightness and
Tomas, as stated above, lost his job as a surgeon because he didn’t want to retract the statements he made in his “Oedipus” article. This is because his article was changed, which in return conveyed a different meaning and was thought to have targeted the Russian regime. I also think that he didn’t retract his statement because he wanted to get rid of his “Es Muss Sein” which is his profession. He didn’t want to bear this lightness of repetitive work, which is why I think he just simply accepted his destiny. Another situation in the story that is related to “Es Muss Sein” is when Teresa left for Prague, he immediately followed her because he thought that Teresa is her soul mate and that it is destiny that brought them together. But then after chasing her back to Prague, he reflected on how they met and realized that Teresa is born of six fortuities meaning that she came into his life only by chance. But then when he dreamt about his “Es Muss Sein” woman in the latter part of the story, why did he state that he would still prefer Teresa over his dream girl? In my perspective, his dream girl has a life that is similar to his -- a life that flows with the lightness of being. He didn’t pick his destiny girl over Teresa because I think that after two years of having a carefree life, he started to feel how the