The role of animals in The Unbearable lightness of being

Medora Choi

28th July, 2009

What role do animals (Karenin, Mefisto, the crow, the cows, etc.) play in the philosophic structure of The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

        In Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the role of animals is always the opposite of the behavior of human being in the philosophic structure.  For example, when a human character such as Tomas is experiencing heavy weight, the animals will always be the opposite --- lightness.         

In this novel, the relationship between of body and soul plays an important part in the role of animals. Tereza had always seen body and soul as one under the influence of her mother “where youth and beauty mean nothing, where the world is nothing but a vast concentration camp of bodies one like the next, with souls invisible” (47), until the day the engineer “lured her up to his flat” (152).  Kundera contrasts the “excited” “soul” with the “betraying” “body” revealing the tension between the body and soul. (155)  She also understood that “the soul for the first time saw the body as something other than banal” (155) that “this was not the most ordinary of bodies; this was the most extraordinary body” (155). On the contrary, “Karenin knew nothing about the duality of body and soul and had no concept of disgust” (297). Although Kundera does not entirely agree with Descartes, he noted that Descartes belives “when animals laments, it is not a lament; it is merely the rasp of a poorly functioning mechanism” (288). “Karenin always kept [Tereza] company.” (284) He does not understand the concept of body and soul because his goal through his entire life is to serve and be loyal to his master, he does not need to satisfy anyone’s sexual needs, and does not need to carry the unbearable weight that Tomas and Tereza have to carry. During the period of time when he has cancer, Karenin was so weak that even chocolate didn’t lift up his mood. Yet he know his duty is to serve his masters, “as soon as he saw Tomas, he gave him a weak wag of the tail. “Look,” said Tereza, “he’s still smiling.””(301).    When he is facing the death of cancer, all he can think of is the physical pain and “lying in a corner whimpering” (294). And this is why Tereza and Karenin both love each other so much in their own ways, because they fill in each other’s missing parts in their lives, and  balancing the body and soul levels as they live. “That is why Tereza felt so free and easy with him.” (297). Gradually, Tereza’s love and tenderness began to fill Karenin’s missing hole (to learn how to identify the body and soul) , because “no one forced her to love Karenin; love for dogs is voluntary” (298), therefore, when Tomas and Tereza “both have to go to work, Tereza went into see Karenin” (300), and “when he heard the door open and saw Tereza come in, he raised his head and looked at her” (300). The look that Karenin gave was not just a loyal and dutiful look, it was a stare. The most frightening thing was “he did not look that way at Tomas” (300), but only at her. “it was not a desperate look, or even sad” (300). “It was a look of awful, unbearable trust. The look was an eager question. All his life Karenin had waited for answers from Tereza, and he was letting her know that he was still ready to learn the truth from her” (300).  This stare proved that Tereza taught Karenin how to love and learn, to have an inner soul inside the body that came out the dying body; hence, she had filled in his empty space. It happens again when Tereza named a heifer, and it is a human being’s advantage to grant souls to animals, because “having a name is a sign of a soul” (290). Therefore, once Tereza named her Marketa, a soul comes along as a side order, building up their relationship to the next level.