Kundera has a novel way of developing his characters. The protagonist of the novel, Tomas, was rather briefly explained in the beginning chapters, mainly through his interaction with other characters such as Tereza and Sabina. What was painted of Tomas then came more strongly through indepth coverage of Tereza and Sabina and their own personal histories. What Tomas came out looking like was sort of a real jerk who crossed his own boundaries only when he couldn’t have it both ways, i.e., love without commitment.
In this section of the story we are invited to see a side of Tomas that is not influenced by his emotional or physical drives, but more by his own facing of his character as it is questioned by that underlying force of government, a thread that has run throughout the story as a background to the people involved.
I like this:
People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation. (p. 192)
Once again Tomas must choose his direction in order to insure his safety within a shaky regime. When he is once again asked to recant his original article and to take it even further he decides to give up even his lowly clinic job, and for a rather strange reason:
The official with whom Tomas negotiated his resignaiton knew him by name and reputation and tried to talk him into staying on. Tomas suddenly realized that he was not at all sure he had made the proper choice, but he felt bound to it by then by an unspoken vow of fidelity, so he stood fast. And that is how he became a window washer.
Fidelity? The one thing that stood as a wall between him and Tereza? For this he is willing to make such a major switch? But Kundera has given us insight into Tomas as well as human nature that makes this decision even more weighty:
Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one of another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all actors the world over are similar–in Paris, Prague, or the back of beyond. An actor is someone who in early childhood consents to exhibit himself for the rest of his life to an anonymous public. (…) Similarly, a doctor is someone who consents to spend his life involved with human bodies and all that they entail. (p. 193)
Where does this fit, then, within the theory of "unbearable lightness of being?" Does the role one takes on come with the burden of fidelity, much as Shakespear’s "to thine own self be true?" Is the burden one of lightness or weight; is the shedding of it one or the other?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology