Tomas 'The Unbearable Lightness Of Being'

In the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being there are four characters that signify the lightness and heaviness. Tomas is a character that shows a lightness in the book as things progress they become heavy. No matter how light we think we are in reality there will always be a bit of heaviness in our life. The areas Tomas’ life that cause him to become “heavy” are his divorce from his ex-wife, infidelity to Tereza, and the political turmoil in his country. Tomas’ divorce from his first wife, consequently been what started the snowball effect in determining the path that his life takes when his marriage ends. He wasn’t married to her for a long time, but they did have a son together. Once divorced from his wife, he had rights to be spending

Of all his sexual encounters he met someone by the name of Tereza. Before Tereza, his life was lightness, Tomas had the freedom to sleep with whomever he wanted and an absence of commitment. He has no wife, kid, or parents to worry about. Even though Tomas didn’t realize it in the beginning, Tereza’s needs and his love for her are associated with weight. He is trying to decide if his feelings towards Tereza are real or not. If Tomas’ feelings are real then that means he will have a responsibility which he hasn’t had since the divorce from his wife. If they are not feelings, then it means he has freedom from the weight, of such responsibility. Tomas made a spontaneous, not rational, decision for necessity, and now experiences the "weight" of Tereza and her "large and enormously heavy" suitcase. (10) The marriage between Tomas and Tereza adds weight to Tomas, because he no longer has the liberty or liability for just himself. Tomas still continues to have affairs, and it affects Tereza causing her to have bad dreams. While living in Zurich Tereza leaves Tomas, due to his continuance of his infidelities, and heads back to

Even though his first marriage is what starts him off with lightness, it is ultimately his divorce from that marriage that makes him heavier. If his ex-wife would have let him see his son and wouldn’t have been playing games, he would have been on good terms with his ex wife and been spending time with his son. Tomas’ parents never would not have stopped talking to him. This means Tomas wouldn’t have feared women and possibly nevermore had a bunch of intimate rendezvous. Tereza’s necessity start holding Tomas down more than what he was used to. He no longer had the freedom of sleeping around as much as he wanted and had to worry about getting home to his wife, Tereza. Tomas saw nothing wrong with what he was doing. "Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman)" (168). The political turmoil ended up making him lose his prestigious job as a surgeon for simply not retracting his publication. No longer being a doctor he went to being a window washer, then later drive a pickup truck for the community