Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Overview… a woman with a more complicated life than it might first appear. With prominent surgeon Tomáš as a husband, it would seem that Tereza’s life would be wonderful in Prague during the sixties. But it’s not that simple. Picking up photography after moving from the countryside, Tereza spends her time wandering the city in an attempt to get her mind off the political instability of the time – and her husband’s blatant affairs.
Personality… subdued and introspective. Tereza is deeply affected by others’ actions, including those of her unfaithful husband. She internalizes these feelings, often trying to change herself in response to criticism while maintaining a strong outer appearance. A tolerant person, Tereza is able to persist through situations that bother her, but she does reach a threshold after which she is not afraid to be bold and act independently.
Get to Know her in...
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Tomas is a doctor and a lady-killer in 1960s Czechoslovakia, an apolitical man who is struck with love for the bookish country girl Tereza; his more sophisticated sometime lover Sabina eventually accepts their relationship and the two women form an electric friendship. The three are caught up in the events of the Prague Spring (1968), until the Soviet tanks crush the non-violent rebels; their illusions are shattered and their lives change forever.
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A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover—these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. Controlled by day, Tereza's jealousy awakens by night, transformed into ineffably sad death-dreams, while Tomas, a successful surgeon, alternates loving devotion to the dependent Tereza with the ardent pursuit of other women. Sabina, an independent, free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—of parents, husband, country, love itself—whereas her lover, the intellectual Franz, loses all because of his earnest goodness and fidelity. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel, says the novelist, "the unbearable lightness of being."
