Saturday, April 13, 2013
Sabina's Lightness
Throughout the novel, Sabina leads a very light life, however sometimes she tiptoes on the brink of a more heavy one. She has a chance with Franz to really commit to something and become more heavy in her ways. However their misunderstandings lead Sabina to abandon the possibility of their real love. She instead runs away and leaves Franz estranged from his wife and without his lover. Sabina is never willing to make a commitment unless she knows it is right, and she never thinks that it is right. Next, when Teresa and Tomas's son calls Sabina to let her know that they have died, Teresa regrets her decision to leave. She feels that Teresa and Tomas had a perfect life and that she wanted it too. This shows how she is ever on the brink of a heavy life, but that she stays light, never willing to make a commitment.
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I think it's interesting how Sabina almost completely foils Tereza in terms of her lightness and weight. Sabina enjoys flings and affairs and considers the weight of a serious romantic relationship, while Tereza prefers weight and considers lightness in her affair with the engineer. Sabina encounters in her life of lightness and desires some weight, but seems pretty confident and comfortable with her lifestyle choices. Sabina is definitely my favorite character because even though she rejects the weight of a steady romantic relationship, she tends to do whatever pleases her and controls her own lifestyle and happiness.
Perhaps it's Sabina's unwillingness to commit that makes up her heaviness. I don't think any of the characters in the novel are entirely light, though Sabina comes the closest. However, I don't think she's incapable of forming relationships, she just runs away from them. her memories of Franz and her moments of regretting leaving him and her memories of Tomas are evidence of the relationships she had formed. Sabina has weigh just the same as everyone else. She just seeks to avoid it.
I think it is the conflicting desire for simultaneously heaviness and weight that is the major source of the conflict both between and within characters. In Sabina's case, we see this in her desire to be rid of Franz and her later questioning of herself as to whether she acted in haste. The irreconcilability of her desires as well as that of the other characters seems to be the dominant contributor to the unhappiness that applies to all the characters in the novel.
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