‘The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina’s life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed.’
Describe the characteristics of the metaphors in passage
Bowler hat and Musical Composition as Metaphors
A musical composition consists of several motifs, each progress from the next, yet they come together harmonically. By extension, Kundera links this to the bowler hat. It is a prop used by Kundera as a metaphor for eternal return. For Sabina, there are different meanings associated with this hat, yet they are linked together like a ‘harmony.’
The bowler hat acts as an example of a motif in the music, and therefore the life of Sabina. The bowler hat, in itself carries five different meanings to Sabina – ‘a vague reminder of a forgotten grandfather’, ‘a memento of his father,’ ‘a prop for her love games with Tomas,’ ‘a sign of her originality which she consciously cultivated,’ and lastly ‘a sentimental object. Due to the progression of time, the subjective perceptions of this prop for Sabina differ.
How do these metaphors assist the author, as he explores his thematic concerns?
What is existence like, what is it to ‘be’?
Kundera uses these metaphors to aid his exploration of human existence. The course of the lives of an individual is like a musical composition. The heavy metaphor of music is with repetitions, yet they are modified in different ways enabling the motifs to be similar yet different, changing the ways which the individual will play that particular motif. This suggests eternal return is present in the lives of all humans, that though we only lead one life, events recur, allowing us to gain deeper understandings of us as humans. All the events merge as one and together they have one purpose – a diversity of symbols that enrich us, ‘intertwining our lives into a shared culture,’ yet still keeping us different and unique as individuals.
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