Lightness vs. Heaviness: Email vs. Text Message

      One of the main themes of the novel is the constant conflict between lightness and heaviness. Some characters such as Teresa and Franz are very heavy. They put lots of meaning into everything in their life. Teresa wants a safe marriage in a rural town, and Franz adores Kitsch. Other characters in the novel such as Tomas and Sabina try to live as light as a life as possible. Keeping this in mind and reading the blog posts of others earlier this week, I began to think to myself what are some of the heavy and light parts of my life. One of the first things that come to mind is email vs. text messages. When you send an email it is usually to a teacher or a member of the faculty. Thought goes into every word and detail of the email. Text messages however are often sent to friends or other students. Language is often much more casual and not as much thought is usually put in. But sometimes text messages can be hold a lot of importance. If you are sending a text to a lover a lot more thought will be put into the text than usual. There is a certain heaviness to these texts. Similarly some of the lighter characters in The Unbearable Lightness of Being can have heavier aspects to them as well. An example of this can be Tomas settling down with Teresa towards the end of the novel and moving to a rural town in Czechoslovakia. Heaviness vs. Lightness is not only a big part of the novel, but it is also a common conflict in the real world as many of the posts this week have shown.