Ignu Reads

I came to read this book as a coincidence.


The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is a novel about the ambivalences of life, the dual nature of things, the randomness of life, and kitsch of politics, religion, and people’s choices. The book starts by Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return, Kundera suggests that we only live once, therefore we are ignorant of the value or drastic consequences of our choices simply because we have not lived another life, we don’t have other repeated experiences to compare our choices with, that we have no way of knowing what is meaningful or not since we only have to make one choice, walk one path, and thus reducing the possible turns our life might take either for good or bad. Life is a chess game, once you start playing, there is no turning back.

    Any schoolboy can do experiments in the physics laboratory or test various scientific hypotheses. But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion or not.

we cannot know what to want, because living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives, nor perfect it in our lives to come

Kundera, unlike Albert Camus, perceives the meaninglessness of the universe as unbearable. Lightness rings the bells of positivity, but in terms of existence it is painful. Kundera in different passages keeps making comparisons between the human and the nonhuman experiences , how we are tormented by our consciousness. The novel is full of dualities, soul and body, privacy and publicity, love and sex, lightness and heaviness.

The Unbearable lightness of being is a novel, so we have the talk about the literary aspect of it. Kundera’s novel reminds me a lot of 1984 by George Orwell, it is set up in a world full of crisis, the 80s in a communist Czech invaded by the Soviets, in a world where there is no room for freedom of speech, nor for privacy under strict surveillance system. But Kundera chose four worn down characters, four of them seeking acceptance, lightness, adventure, and sex.  Kundera is giving us a grotesque peek in the era through dreamy characters, heavy characters, and light characters.

These four characters represent the pillars of society, Tomas the surgeon, Tereza the photo journalist, Sabina the artist, and Franz the intellectual, but they’re disappointed and distrustful when it comes to politics, love, and sexuality. All of them are trying to escape a world into a lighter or heavier one, for Tereza she is yearning for a world where she doesn’t feel objectified, where she doesn’t feel like a pile of meat, a world free of her mother and infidelities, but infidelities and betrayal are at the core of the artistic and sexual life of Sabina, who betrayed her destiny and her history that is loaded with restrictions, and ideals, her betrayals make her life light. For Tomas life is a random collection of fortuities, and coincidences, for him love and sex are two separate  things one for pleasure and the other to discover, and to reveal the “I” of his partners, but for Franz sex is a sacred thing, he believes only by being public can one live in truth, he is so romantic about demonstrations and parades, they represent for him what is real.

These four characters come to know each other by random circumstances, they lose contact in random circumstances, and they die in random circumstances, so random and human they are.

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is more of a philosophical novel, that a literary novel. One of the interesting things I got from the novel is the notion of kitsch. Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word, it excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. Kundera playfully expressed his opinions about politics, and social movements using this notion of Kitsch. Totalitarian kitsch that denies people their individualism, their artistic creativity, their sexual orientations, and their equal rights.

Tomas is disappointed both at the soviet union kitsch, and the editor and the comrades kitsch. Both of them wanted to misuse his words, both of them have death lurking behind, both of them wanted him to sign things he didn’t right.

For Sabina, her life was full of kitsch, first communism kitsch, and later on in her artistic life. A lot of artists dealt with censorship in that era, a lot of them had been called degenerate, they were harshly attacked.





By kitsch, Kundera claims that everything is just a dream, a fantasy, and only true theoretically. His characters are apolitical, not in the sense that they’re ignorant, but consciously apolitical.

The things that give our lives meaning have ridiculous roots.  For Tomas and Tereza, their love is what makes their lives meaningful, but looking back at how they came to love each others we find that it was just a coincidence, Beethoven, room number six, the dog waking up at six. They could have fallen in love with a million other possible people. Even Sabina came to be an artist in a ridiculous way.


 

Before his first day at school, scared Charlie decides to reach out through letters to an anonymous “Friend”, he feels the receiver will understand what he is going through. Charlie is an observer, he is distant, and closed on himself to the degree that he couldn’t share how he felt about his only close friend’s recent suicide. High school is hard, specialty if you’re going through it alone, so that’s one way to see how necessary for Charlie to have someone to talk to, to get things out of his mind about teachers, about his parents weird behavior, and his wanna be an adult sister, as well as his successful college football player brother.




“I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with

people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.

I think you of all people would understand that because I think you of all people are alive and

appreciate what that means. At least I hope you do because other people look to you for strength

and friendship and it’s that simple. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to

figure out how that could be.”




So basically Charlie starts high school on a very bad note, his favorite person, his aunt Helen, as he described her is dead, and his best friend committed suicide because of problems at home, in other words adults selfish unfathomable behavior, so this “Friend” is the only alive person who he can trust. Charlie’s letters are honest, unfiltered, and melancholic, the whole concept of letters is intimate, you get the feeling that you’re a voyeur reading someone else’s secret thoughts, or diary.




Charlie throughout the book goes through different experiences and difficulties. Charlie has to confront death, and bullying, as well as a past sexual molestation, and he also has to figure out who he is, and about his own sexuality since he used to kiss boys when he was a kid and he even kissed Patrick not just once. he learns how to masturbate, how to get high, how to keep a secret, and how to say goodbye to those he loved.




While reading The Perks Of Being A Wallflower I laughed, I remembered my own experience both in college and high school trying to fit, and finding who I am, just like Charlie all of us get lost between running away from everything or putting all our energy to participate. Adolescence is a sensitive period of our lives, if we stuck in the wrong addictive habits, we might carry those habits for the rest of our lives, if we keep beating ourselves, or underestimating ourselves , it will be harder to adapt to people treating you good, you might take the wrong decision and block your potential from unfolding, and you might as well end up developing Impostor Syndrome. Remember “we accept the love we think we deserve”, so always keep reaching for new lights to see yourself.




One of the things I really loved about the book is how I rather of hating some characters, I felt sympathy and sorry for them. Chbosky gives us a glimpse of the world of young adults in the 90s, and how lost can they get trying to mimic adults, or trying to escape the difficulty of such period.





My favorite characters are basically Mary Elizabeth (Which is weird), and the teacher Bill. I can totally see their storylines rewritten for how much they are so independent as characters. For me Mary Elizabeth represents the Third Wave Punk feminist, but Chbosky was brilliant in writing her character, she is smart, opinionated, upfront about others, and one of the strongest female characters in Postmodern literature, although a lot of people might disagree (Specially those who only watched the movie), but Mary Elizabeth is a good friend to Sam, she was a good girlfriend to Charlie, it wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t get himself to talk back, she is half as obnoxious as recent YA overwritten female characters who are supposed to represent strong women. In Addition, Sam, Charlie’s sister, Susan, and Charlie’s brother’s girlfriend are also strong female characters who are independent in facing past and present issues like Sam’s sexual abuse past, Charlie’s Sister’s abortion, and violent boyfriend, or Susan who represents the pressure put on female to look beautiful to get accepted, in a way Susan is one of the ignored characters in the book who leave an impact deep down on our hearts, she is just trying as hard as everyone else to find who she is, and be accepted although if that meant pretending, which can be very alienating, in other words, those famous kids, or bullies are also trying to fit in, to be accepted, to leave an impression on people even if it was bad, to be noticed, and most of all to feel important. so from a feminist perspective, Chbosky got an A writing female characters.




My second favorite character is Bill, the cool hipster teacher, who was so necessary to the evolution of the main character Charlie, his mentoring through the honest conversations with Charlie, as well as giving Charlie different books on different essential themes such as sexuality, drug, and the inevitability of adulthood. Bill kind of reminds me of Holden Caulfield, of them grew up in the same era also known as the lost generation where it was even harder to fit in, or gracefully grow up, therefor he keeps helping Charlie, as well as the audience, all you need to do it read the book references.




Another thing that Chbosky got a straight A for is the gay characters he introduced to us in the novel, as well as giving us glimpses of how it was for gay people through the grandfather who avoids hugging males in general, even Charlie described it as odd and challenging to hug his own grandfather fearing he might not get a chance to say good-bye, and the father who was so relieved to know Charlie has a girlfriend that he gives him both a sex lesson, and a condom to practice it; Charlie belong to the 90s generation which is more tolerant towards LGBT rights, so Chbosky is sort of showing us the evolution of the American society throughout the twentieth century, he even refers to Harvey Milk. Patrick and Brad are both gay in the book, Although Patrick is quite/very open about his sexuality, Brad is very afraid of his sexuality being exposed.




The Perks Of Being A Wallflower is a perfect book to understand the shift from the lost generation, to a more lost and virtual generation. In the book, we see the rise of new mediums of communicating one’s thoughts and feelings, like mixtapes, nowadays it’s more developed so it’s a harder experience for young adults to find a “friend” who would understand them then Holden Caulfield, or Charlie. Yet, the issues the book deals with are still relevant, and even more relevant than before, the scale of drug use, suicide, depression, and alienation young adults deal with is still overwhelming.




Stephen Chbosky made The Perks Of Being A Wallflower such a remarkable work of fiction through his realist, not exaggerated style, and his tangible characters who make us contemplate our own lives, and future.




If you ever feel depressed, lonely, or misunderstood just reach out for a friend like Charlie did.




Finally, your suggestions, comments, and criticism are highly welcomed!