Study Guide

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Part 5, Chapter 10

By Milan Kundera

Part 5, Chapter 10

The narrator divides womanizers into two separate categories.
The first type of womanizer has a lyrical obsession and goes through women looking for "their own subjective and unchanging" ideal of a what a woman should be (5.10.1).
These men are endlessly disappointed, because an ideal is "by definition something that can never be found" (5.10.2).
The other type of womanizer has an obsession that is epic.
Everything interests him; so nothing disappoints him. Tomas belongs to this group. While the lyrical types pursue the same kind of woman all the time, the epic types are like curiosity collectors.
Two years into his window-washing career, Tomas was sent to the apartment of a peculiar woman. She was very tall, taller than he, and had a long nose, and looked like "an odd combination of giraffe, stork, and a sensitive young boy" (5.10.6).
Once Tomas goes inside, she tells him he can do anything he wants, and then offers him a glass of wine. He knows that she knows who he is, by reputation.
They flirt, which inevitably leads to touching. She doesn't resist until his hand gets to her groin.
Then he tells her that he has to get going to his next job.
She says that she'll order him back some time, since her husband is paying for it anyway.

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