"The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

Paper Summary:

In Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" both Tereza and Tomas repeatedly think of the series of fortuitous events that brought them together. This paper considers the role of fortuity, chance and coincidence in their lives and discusses it in relation to Wislawa Szymborksa's poem "Love at First Sight".

From the Paper:

"In both the novel and the poem, the authors want to make readers think about fortuities in terms of their own lives I believe. However one can speculate that these works are not out for solid answers, but work rather as a medium for the authors' views on this issue. In fact, it is an endless source of philosophical speculation because really, no one knows the answer. Significantly, neither of the authors brings God into their speculation but of course there are those who think everything is fated in advance. Others believe in free will but clearly in both texts the readers are being drawn into the debate. Kundera does this by often addressing the reader directly by using metafiction or asking questions. Szymborska uses rhetorical question directed to the archetypical couple. "

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