The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

1
The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting

• Themes, Symbols Quotations

2
Symbols Themes Head

• P. 68 and Marketa had removed the head from
  his body. He was a mans body without a head.
  Karel disappeared and a miracle occurred Marketa
  was free and joyous! (Part II)

3

• P. 69 And she also desired them with her head
  fulfilling the prophecy of her math teacher, she
  wantedat least to the limits of the disastrous
  contractto show herself enterprising and
  playful, and to astonish Karel. (Part II)

4

• P. 101 and bent her head to place the
  cardboard cone, decorated with over her nose and
  fasten it around the back of her head with the
  rubber band. (Part III)

5

• P. 116 Whenever she sat facing a man, she would
  use his head as material for sculpture (Part
  IV)

6

• P. 284 What he wanted was to press his hand
  firmly against the top of her skull, gently push
  her head back, and then gaze into her eyes. he
  put his hand on a womans head That imperious
  touch and sovereign gaze would at once reverse an
  entire situation the great scene of his full
  possession of her. (Part VII)

7
Symbols Themes Writer

• P. 116 she was horrified every day to notice
  the imaginary sketch showing newly questionable
  points introduced by the uncertain memory that
  was doing the drawing. (Part IV)

8

• P.124 All anyone can do, is give a report on
  oneself.
• P. 126 We write books because our children
  arent interested in us. We address ourselves to
  an anonymous world because our wives plug their
  ears when we speak to them. (Part IV)

9

• P. 218 And then others write other books for
  it, give another culture to it, invent another
  history for it
• (Part VI)

10
The difference between writers and Graphomaniac-

• P. 127 Graphomania is not a desire to write
  letters, personal diaries, or family chronicles
  (to write for oneself or ones close relations)
  but a desire to write books (to have a public of
  unknown readers). What distinguishes is not a
  difference in passions but one passions
  different results. ( Part IV)

11
The difference between human being and writer

• P. 146 Tamina has the impression that a single
  outsiders glance can destroy the entire worth of
  her intimate notebooks, and Goethe is convinced
  that a single glance of a single human being
  which fails to fall on lines written by Goethe
  calls into question Goethes very existence.
  (Part IV)

12
Symbols Themes Sex

• P. 17 When she reproached him, the first time
  they made love, about his acting too
  intellectual, he had tried starting the next day,
  to correct that impression by showing
  spontaneous, unbridled passion. (Part I)

13

• P. 18. . . . the sound of his overattentiveness
  and subservience, of his ridiculousness and
  misery. (Part I)
• P. 66 . . . he seemed incessantly to be
  describing the same movement, from childhood to
  adulthood and then in reverse, and once again
  from the little boy miserably gazing at the
  gigantic body of a woman. . . (Part II)

14

• P. 69 With an odd delight, she expelled her
  wounded and too vigilant soul and was transformed
  into a simple body without past or memory, but
  all the eager and receptive. (Part II)

15

• P. 153 . . . he was joined in a decisive
  battle, he was taking a test to prove he could
  conquer and be worthy of her. (Part IV)

16

• P. 244 . . . because for the first time in her
  life her body was taking pleasure in the absence
  of the soul, which imagining nothing, remembering
  nothing, . . . (Part VI)

17

• P. 282 Every man has two erotic biographies.
  The first is the one people talk about, the one
  consisting of a list of affairs and passing
  amours. The other ismore interesting the
  procession of women we wanted to have but who
  eluded us, the painful history of unrealized
  possibilities. (Part VII)

18
Conclusion

• Women sex is a way to escape from reality and a
  refuge for their souls.

• Men a way to hide their weakness or to show
  their power by conquering the womans body (not
  soul though).

• Sex Communism ? (Zdenas comment to Mireks
  love-making and Barbaras sex party)

19
Symbols Themes Forgetting

• P. 4 The struggle of man against powering is
  the struggle of memory against forgetting.
• P. 33 Those who have emigrated and those who
  were reduced to silence and driven from their
  jobs are invisible and forgotten. (Part I)

20
Forgetting

• P. 119 Because if the tottering structure of
  her memories collapse like a clumsily pitched
  tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the
  present, that invisible point, that nothingness
  moving slowly toward death. (Part IV)
• P. 256 Is she still looking back? Does she
  think about her husband and Prague? No. not
  anymore. (Part VI)

21
Forgetting

• P. 218. You begin to liquidate people by
  taking away its memory. You destroy its books,
  its culture, its history.
• P. 224 Tamina will never forgive herself for
  forgetting. (Part VI)

22
Forgetting

• Political factors
• The opening of Part I Lost Letters Part VI
  The Angels The fur hat on Gottwald's head
  (Clementis airbrushed out of historyhe was
  charged with treason and hanged.)

23
Forgetting

• Political factors (continued)
• Pp. 9-10 The assassination of Allende quickly
  covered over the memory of the Russian invasion
  of Bohemia, Forgotten overnight, a historic
  event glistens the next day like the morning
  dew (Part I)

24
Forgetting

• Political factors (continued)
• P. 217 In those destroyed monuments, statues of
  Lenin are springing up in Bohemia like the
  weeds among ruins, like melancholy flowers of
  forgetting.
• Gustav Husak the President of Forgetting.
  (Part VI)

25
Conclusion

• The fear of being forgotten and forgetting
• A political way to control people
• Historic event juxtaposed with
  individual/personal life
• Tamina Kundera ?

26
Symbols Themes Letters

• p.22 You know I used to write you a lot of
  letters. I want them back.

• PART I
• p.5 But first he wants to settle the Zdena
  business

27

• PART II
• p. 38 Marketa felt an indulgent patience
  and had even started to write to her regularly.
  The old woman replying conscientiously and
  demanding more and more letters.

28

• PART III
• p.77 Gabrielle and Michelle, They were
  the favorite students of Madame Raphael .
  because they always gazed attentively at her and
  carefully wrote down every one of her remarks.

29

• PART III
• p. 83 When R. asked me to write an astrology
  column for the weekly in secret, I of course
  reacted enthusiastically and advised her to tell
  the editorial board that the writer be a
  brilliant nuclear physicist

30

• PART IV
• p. 119 She know, of course, the
  notebooks . . . What is urging her on is not a
  desire for beauty. It is a desire for life.

31

• PART IV
• p.137 I know the two of you arent on
  speaking terms. Theyre things of mine. Letters
  and such. I have a right to them.

32

• PART V
• p. 192 Then he Goethe bent over the
  title page, took out his pen, and started to
  write. ... She had been turned into a queen.

33

• PART VI
• Pp. 220-21 He Father called me into his
  room one day. The variations movement of the
  Opus 111 sonata thats strange Variation
  form was Beethovens favorite toward the end of
  his life.

34

• PART VI
• p. 299 His whole speech had been written
  Directly addressing the deceased, it made
  promises to him, agreed with him,

35
Conclusion

• Communication
• Memory
• Ideas/ concept delivery
• Connection of relationships

36
Symbols Themes Trips

• PART I
• p. 5 but first.. to shift gears, Mirel had
  to let go of the steering wheel.

37
Trips

• PART II
• Pp. 37, 38 one day Karels father died
  and Mama was alone. They saw her at the funeral.
  they invited her to stay for a week.

38
Trips

• PART III
• Pp. 96, 97 the next day, I took a long
  streetcar ride, Inside my own body I felt the
  fear of the young woman unable to open the door
  because her anxiety was upsetting her bowels.
• p. 104 suddenly Madame Raphael stamped her
  foot harder and rose a few.. (till the end of
  the paragraph)

39

• PART IV
• p. 111 Not long ago, she Bibi told her
  Tamina she was planning to go with her husband
  on vacation to Prague that summer.
• p. 114 Tamina and her husband had left
  Bohemia illegally. headed west.
• p. 131 Hugo added if she ends up not
  going on that trip, you can count on me. Ill go
  over and get your parcel.

40

• PART V
• p.163 Meeting the student turned her head
  powerfully. He had come to the town to spend his
  summer vacation with his mother..
• p. 165 Anyway, vacation ended and the two
  lovers realized it would be hard for them to go a
  whole year without seeing each other.

41

• PART V
• p. 175 he waited for Voltaire in front of
  the Writers Club and then went up with him to the
  second floor.

42

• PART VI
• p. 224 Havent you ever felt like going
  away? Some place where things are as light as
  the breeze. Where things have lost their weight.
  Where theres no remorse.
• So this place suggests oblivion and
  death. See pp. 257-258, 262
• PART VII
• p. 271 I went to picking mushrooms with
  Passer. We got lost in the woods and then a
  cafe.

43
Trips idea of the border

• PART VII
• p. 282 Jan was on a train.
• p. 296 when you cross the border, laughter
  fatefully rings out. But what if you go still
  farther, go beyond laughter?
• p. 297 the border is constantly with us,
  irrespective of time and our stage of life, that
  it is omnipresent, even though circumstances
  might make it more or less visible.

44
Trips idea of the border

• PART VII
• p. 310 he was assailed by that vague,
  mysterious idea of the border. He felt he was
  right on the line, crossing it.
• the Jews had also been on the other side
  of the border and thus ... That nakedness is a
  shroud.

45
Conclusion

• To recall /get something back.
• To forget something
• To help characters to reexamine their attitude
  toward their lives and the relationship of the
  people around them.
• To prove self-existence
• Other purposes

46
Laughter

• Definition (p.80)
• that delightful trance of happiness, that
  utmost height of sensual pleasure. Laughter of
  sensual pleasure, sensual pleasure of laughter.
  (Part III)

47
Laughter

• Purpose (p.81)
• the expression of being rejoicing in
  being.
• Influence (p.81)
• The movie scene of a boy and a girl are
  running and laughing. All churches, all
  underwear manufacturers, all political parties,
  are in agreement about that kind of laughter

48
Laughter

• Examples
• -Michelle Gabrielles laughter (pp. 78, 81,
  90)
• -Raphael, Tamina, and the boys laughter
• (p. 230)
• -Childrens laughter (p.257)

49
Two Kinds of Laughter

• Devils laughter
• Definition (p.86)
• Things deprived suddenly of their supposed
  meaning, of the place assigned to them in the
  so-called order of things, make us laugh. In
  origin, laughter is thus of the devils domain.

50
Devils laughter

• Influence (p.86)
• --Bad something malicious
• things suddenly turning out different from
  what they pretended to be
• --Good a beneficent relief
• things are less weighty than they appeared
  to be, letting us live more freely.

51
Devils laughter

• Purpose (p.87)
• to denote the absurdity of things
• Examples
• - Madame Raphaels and the classs laughter
  (p.103)
• - Rs laughter on the horoscope cast (p.99)
  good influence

52
Devils laughter

• - Jan and the womans laughter before having
  sex (Pp.291, 292)
• - The comic shows (p. 296)
• - The two couples laughter in Barbaras sex
  party (p. 307)

53
Angels laughter

• Definition (p.86)
• The rational meaning to the divinely created
  world.
• Purpose (p.87)
• the angel meant to rejoice over how well
  ordered, wisely conceived, good, and meaningful
  everything here below was.

54
Games

• Sex
• - Marketas evening gown Eva (p.61)
• - Threesome (p. 66)
• - The children serve Tamina as a reward (p.243)
• - The carpenterhammer game (p.286)
• - The sex party at Barbaras place (p. 303)

55

• Self-illusion
• Tamina imagines her husbands face on other
  mens faces
• Mass consciousness, rule of a society
• - The hopscotch game (p.252)
• - The war between Tamina the children (P.255)