Dreaming in TULB

Tereza has many odd dreams throughout the beginning of the novel that all relate to Tomas. They are usually connected to how he sleeps around with many women and is a very commanding man. The specific dream I want to talk about is the one where she is going to get executed, or at least I think it's a dream. It is never explicitly stated, however I think it is supposed to be assumed due to the lack of reality surrounding the scene. It seems like Tereza is very unhappy with life, and the only thing she lives for is Tomas, and she is not happy with his actions. She did not say she wanted to die before, but I think this is the first time she realizes that she contemplates death as a possibility. Later in the novel she says she wants to die, but I haven't finished it yet so I'm not sure if she dies in the end or not. Overall dreams function as an important window into the mind of Tereza, but I wonder what this dream means.

So, for my friend's college English class they have to give a speech on "Something I believe but cannot prove." And they ca't do any of the big topics like global warming or abortion. My friend was stuck on what to do and we started discussing possibilities. One of the things that came up was "I believe but cannot prove that a lot of the symbolism in books is unintentional and created by critics."
Now, I'm not denying that some symbolism is on purpose (when birds are repeatedly used in novels that generally symbolizes something). But, for example, I read a short story about this male predator named Arnold Friend and they had this whole thing about how he walked weird in his shoes (supposedly because he stuffed him shoes to make himself seem taller). But then some critics argue that its actually hooves in the shoes and he's the devil. (I still don't understand how they managed to jump to this conclusion. That's like - how can we make this interesting? Oh  yeah. He's the devil!)
But in some cases, I think critics read too much into colors. I mean, when I look at Beloved, I can see that there's a lot of use of color (color being used in the quilt as well as color as a part of race. I get it.) But sometimes, when critics start to analyze the meaning behind the color scheme I just want to say "Maybe the author just liked that color!"
From my own experience, I wrote this long ere a story where at one point there was this dream where a girl was running around in a red dress (don't ask me why, it was a dream) and some one who read it said, "Oh! I can't wait to find out the meaning behind the red dress!" Yeah... there was no meaning. Red just happens to be my favorite color.
I think this is where the idea that once the story goes public, it no longer belongs to the artist comes into play.  If people want to see symbolism where it isn't there, it's not like the artist can stop them. I mean, I'm not kidding. For the Harry Potter series, some crazy people wrote a petition to J.K. Rowling telling her to stop trolling and write the seventh book right where Harry ends up with Hermione. I'm sorry - what? Anyway, the artist only creates the piece and then after that it's for the audience's taking.

Coincidence

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being (TULB) the narrator explains the beauty of coincidence in novels and in real life.  Personally I ALWAYS get really excited when I have a deja vu moment (which is like a coincidence, right?) and when a coincidence happens to me. He describes the coincidental death in Anna Karenina as having a novelistic beauty.  He distinguishes between novelistic and  fantastical, fake, or totally fabricated.  He makes the reader think that coincidence adds an element of beauty and composition to life like it does a in a novel or a piece of music.  He disapproves of people who fail to recognize coincidences and the real-life magic of them, because they are missing out on a significant aspect of life…and therefore do not fully appreciate life. To me, coincidences make me question whether life is run by chance (because really- what are the odds that you’d run into your long-lost friend on hike in California?) or if that encounter was meant to be. Whether or not coincidences are evidence of fate or of random chance, they are special and beautiful.

Theme of Opposites is TULB

In TULb one of the major themes in the novel is the balance between opposites and the morality of one side verves it’s opposite or making a value judgement on either side.  One part has to be positive or good and it’s related opposite must therefore be negative or bad.  I think Toaists and Manichaeans had a similar philosophy of moral dualism for instance- yin vs yang. The narrator explains that eternal return, the recurrence of every experience forever, is a heavy burden weighted with moral implications and truth.  According to Parmenides, a Greek philosopher, the narrator hypothesizes that lightness of being—having no responsibility or moral obligations is the opposite of being burdened so it must be positive and eternal return, or the heaviness of being is negative. But he is unsure if that is true. (Is it? Must lightness/weight of being be deemed good or bad or can't it just be a fact of life?) Other dual aspects of relationships mentioned in the book include: sacrifice and guilt, fear of women and “erotic friendship” with them, trust and betrayal, male verses female sexuality, body and soul, etc. Tomas himself is described as a conjunction of “two worlds.” He is both a romantic lover and a debacherous womanizer.

Rememory

I don’t understand completely what Morrison means by rememory but I find the idea of it interesting. I understand rememory to be a memory that is so strong that it imprints into your head and in the place that it happened so you and others that didn’t experience it personally can experience the memory mentally, physically or emotionally. Examples in the book of rememory include: Beloved revives painful rememories for Sethe continually and the part when the 3 women go to the Clearing and Sethe falls into a reverie of Baby Suggs and the black community gathering.  The Clearing seems to generate the memories for her. I think rememory exists today, but I never thought of calling it “rememory.” When you go to a historical place like a civil war battle field, a famous person’s house like MLK or Falkner, a castle, or a concentration camp you can sometimes (vaguely) image yourself there at the moment the place was being used. Visiting those places makes the past come alive, which is important for learning about history, understanding how people lived and their rational for doing certain things and for sympathizing with past generations. If you can feel/image what people experienced in those historical places (maybe by having a kind of out-of-body experience) you might gain a better understanding of the human experience or be able to compare the past to the present better.

Quilts

I find it interesting that quilts were used by African-American, like those seen in Beloved, to communicate. Quilts were sown with symbols and different types of representations to help escaping slaves identify routes to freedom. I think this is ingenious. The quilts were used as a map. Symbols could represent an array of things such as the North Star, which was obviously important as it designated the Northern direction, a direction the slaves would have most definitely wanted to travel. Quilts also depicted images of a wagon wheel, crossroads, and a log cabin, which could be used as a place refuge in their long and difficult journey to freedom. 

Oral Tradition

I believe oral tradition in African and African American culture is very important. It was a way for people to communicate and even pass down stories and traditions. In Things Fall Apart there were community story tellers who passed down information integral to traditions and community stories or superstitions. In the African-American culture seen in Beloved, stories and songs were used to tell people how to escape the life of slavery (for example through the Underground Railroad). Songs and singing could be used as an expression of values, sources of inspiration and motivation, expressions of protest, and as a communication tool.