Study Guide

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Part 2, Chapter 2

By Milan Kundera

Part 2, Chapter 2

Tereza's stomach rumbling reveals "the irreconcilable duality of body and soul" (2.2.1).
Before we understood the body scientifically, man could not identify himself with so foreign an object.
But now that we understand the body, we can't simply imagine it as a cage, and can't pretend that our real self is the soul buried inside. The soul and the body are mixed up together.
Except not in Tereza's case. She had just fallen in love with Tomas, and then her stomach rumbled.
The contrast between something so spiritual and something so physical wrenched a divide between her soul and her body.

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