Kundera is interested in the existential code of each of his characters more than in their physical description. In The Art of the Novel he explains that “to apprehend the self in the novel means to grasp the essence of its existential problem” (Kundera 25). The existential code reveals itself in the situations in which the characters are placed. Kundera doesn’t show us what happens inside the characters’ heads; rather he situates them in circumstances tied to public events and investigates their attitudes. He grasps the characters by understanding and naming their attitudes (Kundera 25).
The days Teresa walks through the streets of Prague “taking pictures of Russian soldiers and looking danger in the face” are the best of her life, and she enjoys a few happy nights (Kundera 26). “The Russians had brought equilibrium to her in their tanks” (Kundera 27). The carnival atmosphere in the streets of Prague replaces the weight of her problems and the responsibility of her love for Tomas. But when the “carnival of hate is over,” and when the Russians force the Czech representatives to sign a compromise agreement, Teresa fears her nights again. Here's where we begin to see the connection between individual lives and individual problems and the body of the state. Kundera provides us with keys to understanding Teresa’s character – her feelings – from which we grasp the character’s nature.
The historical circumstances of the Soviet occupation are used to reveal the existential situation for the characters in the novel (Kundera 37). Kundera offers analysis of situations and insists on understanding the essence of a situation rather than the physical appearance of the character. Understanding the situation that shapes the characters and grasps their existential problem is what makes them alive and real. The essence of a character’s existential problem is rooted in themes of the novel.
Teresa’s body is her main theme. She longs to be a body unlike other bodies (Kundera 47). Teresa insists upon the uniqueness of her body. Within a totalitarian regime, the individual body and all that is most private is in need of being protected, “if any sense of individual integrity is to be retained” (Rhine 231). Her mother is another of Teresa’s main themes. “When she lived at home her mother forbade her to lock the bathroom door,” and implied that Teresa’s body was just like all other bodies: Teresa had no right to shame and no reason to hide something that existed in millions of identical copies (Kundera 57). “Since childhood, Teresa had seen nudity as a sign of concentration camp uniformity” (Kundera 57). Her mother’s injunction against privacy of the intimate body mirrors the state’s “complete obliteration of privacy” (Kundera 137). Here a connection is established between private body and a political system, and the leveling of individuals that is common in totalitarian societies.
Tomas’s repeated infidelities cause Teresa’s torment and jealousy. In her nightmares she is marching around the pool naked with a large group of other naked women, where all bodies are equal, which means that Tomas has drawn an equal sign between Teresa’s body and the other bodies. “Her mother's world, which she had fled ten years before, seemed to be coming back to her.” Tomas’s womanizing denies the uniqueness of her body, of all bodies. Here is another connection made to the state, and a reference to assimilation with no distinction that negates the sacred integrity of individual body. Both Tomas and her mother have placed Teresa in the “concentration camp” of bodies, where one body is just like another.
Kundera says that “not only the historical circumstances create a new existential situation for a character in a novel, but history itself must be understood and analyzed as an existential situation” (Kundera 38).
“When Alexander Dubcek returned to Prague, he gave a speech over the radio. He was so devastated after his six-day detention he could hardly talk; he kept stuttering and gasping for breath, making long pauses between sentences, pauses lasting nearly thirty seconds” (Kundera, Milan part 1, 26).
This historical episode reveals the weak state of the country. Teresa cannot bear that weakness and prefers to emigrate, but faced with Tomas’s infidelities she is like Dubcek – disabled and weak (Kundera 38). She leaves Tomas and returns from Switzerland to the “city of the weak,” because she understands that she belongs among the weak, “and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak and gasped for breath in the middle of sentences” (Kundera 73). Kundera explains that here the historical situation is itself a human situation – a growing existential situation (Kundera 39). Here the Prague Spring is not described in its historical aspect but as a fundamental existential situation.
Returning again to the link between private life and the state, Kundera compares the weight Tomas feels after Teresa returns to Prague to “the tons of steel of the Russian tanks” (Kundera 31). At the same time, Kundera takes the individual issues of lightness and weight and connects them to the country. Teresa could not forget the awful pauses in the middle of Dubcek’s sentences, and how he seemed unable to breathe as if a heavy pressure was coming down on him (Kundera 26). “One thing was clear: the country would have to bow to the conqueror” (Kundera 26). The entire country is placed under the weight of the compromise and humiliation.
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