Saturday, August 22, 2015

So here I am on my way home from Saints game this Saturday evening, writing my last blog post of the week. Sitting in the back of my dad's car I am still trying to put my finger on Kundera's concept of lightness vs. weight. I understand the difference between the two, yet I have a hard time actually deciding which lifestyle is better. Take weight, it is actually the more practical side of the spectrum. to have weight means taking up responsibility for ones actions. It may by more practical, but seems to be a more stressful situations. Tereza, who is known to be heavy seems lost with the world. Tereza is so bogged down by weight she can't have a content life. So does that make lightness the better solution?  In Tomas'  life, he has always had to take less responsibility for his actions. It appears to me much more laid back and relaxed, this could make lightness the better form of life. But Tomas also appears to be lost with himself both sexually and his family relations. He is too light to have a strong relationship with his wife or son. So I guess the question that lightness and weight pose actually asks which form of misery would a person prefer.

1 comment:

master123 said...

Personally I would chose the weighted life. I will use Franz as an example because one he represents weight and two he is my favorite character. Franz's weight comes from a multitude of things, such as his yearn for real life, his burden of respecting his wife's "inner woman," and his need to have a meaning (i.e. the Grand March). When Kundera says he yearns for real life he means that Franz wants a life other than his, his life being a professor who is suffocated by his office. A way for Franz to step out of his life so to say is by joining demonstrations, protest against something, or celebrate something. These public debuts Franz attends is his way to find or add meaning/heaviness to his life. His burden and more importantly acknowledging his burden, unlike Thomas who justifies his infidelities to Tereza, is his mistress Sabina. Franz is married and tells himself he needs to respect the woman within his wife, therefor he cannot sleep with Sabina in the same area in which he lives. Again the burden makes him heavy, by keeping a constant worry to his life. The Grand March also fall under the category of demonstrations, but the grand march also creates a connection to other people in the world, making the person who joins instantly heavy. To Kundera all these loops and hoops that Franz jumps threw to make his life heavy is futile since life is unbearably light. To me Franz's strife is an honorable one, I say make your life heavy, give yourself meaning, because with out a sense of weight we might as well float away to the clouds, and the misery will be worth it.