Chapter 4 - Soul and Body

The loss of self through the notion of 'concentration camp' and surveillance

In the Unbearable Lightness of Being, the people are stripped of their individuality due to the Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia. People are expected to live as a Russian would, thereby rid these people of their individual identity. Tereza’s family is a microcosm of such situation, her mother attempts to seek vengeance by humiliating her. Her mother continuously speaks of the human bodies being exact same copies, that there should no embarrassment, mystery or secrecy around this subject. Tereza detests her mother’s mindset of ‘[forcing] the whole world to look’ at ‘one’s ruins, one’s ugliness’ and ‘[parading] one’s misery. In allowing her to do this, Tereza feels that she has been robbed of her privacy, her individuality and most importantly, her soul. 

The notion of concentration camp is used as a representation of a loss of self, where people live ‘crammed together constantly,’ it is a world of ‘brutality and violence,’ a world that obliterates privacy. The normalisation of this concept of concentration camp in Tereza’s life suggests that her soul, over many years has been degraded. She has lost her sense of self. She attempts to escape from this concentration camp-like life with the ‘greatest of efforts,’ to discover the uniqueness that lies dormant inside her that can differentiate her from her mother and other women.

The use of surveillance is prominent in this section in maintaining this loss of being, a loss of self. The Czech secret police is deployed as the primary method of surveillance by the Russian government in monitoring the people, particular those who have fled legislation. Conversations are recorded by means of technology, allowing for the sustainment of evidence that preserves history. ‘Trivial remarks,’ whether hyperboles that are of satirical political content or ‘dirty…filthy language’ are targeted so that they Russians can redeploy them as a weapon for blackmailing, to shame those targeted, to emasculate the trust that the community has in them.