The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by

Milan Kundera

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Unbearable Lightness of Being makes teaching easy.

Franz Character Analysis

Sabina’s lover, Marie-Claude’s husband, and Marie-Anne’s father. Franz is a professor who makes his living with words. He gives lectures at the university and writes academic articles, yet he comes to the conclusion that “no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff, dust, sand.” Franz and Sabina have multiple misunderstandings rooted in language, and they define common words differently, which underscores Kundera’s overreaching argument that language is unstable and that meaning can never be fixed. Franz eventually comes clean to Marie-Claude about his affair with Sabina, but he is left alone when both Marie-Claude and Sabina leave him. Franz then falls in love and moves in with his girlfriend, one of his young students. Even after Sabina leaves him, Franz remains obsessed with Czechoslovakia and other Communist countries, of which he holds romanticized ideals of persecution and revolution. When a friend invites Franz to join the Grand March into Cambodia to protest the government’s refusal to let doctors into the country, Franz agrees to go because he believes Sabina would want him to. Ironically, Sabina hates the Grand March—she considers it the height of kitsch—and she wouldn’t want anyone to go. The Grand March is ultimately unsuccessful, and when they reach the border of Cambodia, they are ignored. Franz is so disappointed that he wants to rush the border and be gunned down by the Vietnamese military just to add weight and significance to the meaningless protest, but instead he returns to Bangkok and is assaulted there by three men attempting to rob him. Franz later dies at a hospital in Geneva, his life having been overwhelmingly “light” and meaningless. Franz desperately tries to add bulk and meaning to his life through relationships and protests such as the Grand March. His search for meaning proves futile, and he dies, “unbearably” light, never to return and destined to fade into obscurity and insignificance. Franz serves as the personification of “Einmal ist keinmal,” or “once is never,” an old German saying that assumes that which happens once may as well not happen at all.

Franz Quotes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The The Unbearable Lightness of Being quotes below are all either spoken by Franz or refer to Franz. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Time, Happiness, and Eternal Return Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.

Related Characters: Franz, Franz’s Girlfriend
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 2 Quotes

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. I might call it Heraclitus’ (“You can’t step twice into the same river”) riverbed; the bowler hat was a bed through which each time Sabina saw another river flow, another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one. Each new experience would resound, each time enriching the harmony. The reason why Tomas and Sabina were touched by the sight of the bowler hat in a Zurich hotel and made love almost in tears was that its black presence was not merely a reminder of their love games but also a memento of Sabina’s father and of her grandfather, who lived in a century without airplanes and cars.

Related Characters: Tomas, Sabina, Franz
Related Symbols: Sabina’s Black Bowler Hat
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 13 Quotes

The fantasy of the Grand March that Franz was so intoxicated by is the political kitsch joining leftists of all times and tendencies. The Grand March is the splendid march on the road to brotherhood, equality, justice, happiness; it goes on and on, obstacles notwithstanding, for obstacles there must be if the march is to be the Grand March.

The dictatorship of the proletariat or democracy? Rejection of the consumer society or demands for increased productivity? The guillotine or an end to the death penalty? It is all beside the point. What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.

Related Characters: Franz
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 29 Quotes

What remains of the dying population of Cambodia?

One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms.

What remains of Tomas?

An inscription reading HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH

What remains of Beethoven?

A frown, an improbably man, and a somber voice intoning “Es muss sein!

What remains of Franz?

An inscription reading A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.

And so on and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

Related Characters: Tomas, Franz, Simon, Marie-Claude, The American Actress
Page Number: 277-8
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Unbearable Lightness of Being LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being PDF

Franz Quotes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The The Unbearable Lightness of Being quotes below are all either spoken by Franz or refer to Franz. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Time, Happiness, and Eternal Return Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing.

Related Characters: Franz, Franz’s Girlfriend
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 2 Quotes

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. I might call it Heraclitus’ (“You can’t step twice into the same river”) riverbed; the bowler hat was a bed through which each time Sabina saw another river flow, another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one. Each new experience would resound, each time enriching the harmony. The reason why Tomas and Sabina were touched by the sight of the bowler hat in a Zurich hotel and made love almost in tears was that its black presence was not merely a reminder of their love games but also a memento of Sabina’s father and of her grandfather, who lived in a century without airplanes and cars.

Related Characters: Tomas, Sabina, Franz
Related Symbols: Sabina’s Black Bowler Hat
Page Number: 88
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 13 Quotes

The fantasy of the Grand March that Franz was so intoxicated by is the political kitsch joining leftists of all times and tendencies. The Grand March is the splendid march on the road to brotherhood, equality, justice, happiness; it goes on and on, obstacles notwithstanding, for obstacles there must be if the march is to be the Grand March.

The dictatorship of the proletariat or democracy? Rejection of the consumer society or demands for increased productivity? The guillotine or an end to the death penalty? It is all beside the point. What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.

Related Characters: Franz
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6, Chapter 29 Quotes

What remains of the dying population of Cambodia?

One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms.

What remains of Tomas?

An inscription reading HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH

What remains of Beethoven?

A frown, an improbably man, and a somber voice intoning “Es muss sein!

What remains of Franz?

An inscription reading A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.

And so on and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

Related Characters: Tomas, Franz, Simon, Marie-Claude, The American Actress
Page Number: 277-8
Explanation and Analysis: