A Book
             Review
             on
            
             The
             Unbearable
             Lightness
             Of
             Being
            
             A Novel
            
             Milan Kundera
            
            
             Plot
            
             This International Bestseller is about a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humble faithful lover – these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. 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 "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our private actions, but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.
             This novel revolves around the idea of eternal return as "a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: without mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature." Nietzsche says that a life that is only lived once means nothing.
             Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens.
             But is lightness splendid and heaviness deplorable? The heaviest of burdens sinks us, crushes us, and pins us to the ground. But in "the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body." A woman would rather be burdened by the pains a man brings her than to live without any burden at all due to the absence of love.
             The heaviest of burdens is an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Having completely no burden would be considered an illusion if ever it is at all possible.
             The absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, take leave of the earth, and become only half real, his movements are free as they are insignificant. What is the use of a life without any burdens and trials to learn from? It is through these burdens that we shal...