Each time the pictures recur throughout the story the reader gains a greater understanding of the development of Tereza’s character.Īt first, the pictures are a triumph for Tereza: “The days she walked through the streets of Prague taking pictures of Russian soldiers and looking danger in the face were the best of her life.” The next time the photographs are mentioned begins with great promise and it casts Tereza as having been part of a movement to “preserve the face of violence for the distant future.” But the very next section dampens the excitement. Tereza’s photographs of the girls in miniskirts holding flags in the faces of Russian soldiers during the autumn of 1968 are one example of this symmetrical composition. Kundera refers to something he calls “symmetrical composition–the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end” and insists “human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion.”
Like waves lapping up onto the shore, these incidents never completely overlap and the repeated introduction of the same events has the effect of giving the reader a more nuanced view of these events and the characters while reinforcing the importance of the scene.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera presents the same scenes over and over again throughout the narrative.
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