Find The Existence Of The Forgotten

Among Kundera's ten independent and self-contained novels with the common theme of the existence, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a representative with conspicuous polyphonic characteristics. At the same time the accomplishment of this novel is also an important symbol for the transition of Kundera's creative writings. This novel invested in two concepts that belongs to both of the physiological and psychological range of human being which called laughter and forgetting in a poetic way, as well, it goes very well with Kundera's questing for the theme of the existence in his other works. And so it continued his explorations and discoveries in new angles of the existence by using Kundera's own style such as keywords, polyphony and humor and so on. This paper starts from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and its core contents is to analyze the description of details, formal features and the thematic expression of this novel, at the same time, it will also extend its researching scope to the themes of Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality by dint of the similarity of three characters Tamina, Teresa, and Agnes, and then will expand to the huge topics of Kundera's novel system.Except for the two parts of introduction and conclusion, the main body of this thesis consists of the three chapters. The first chapter attempts to do a comprehensive interpretation from the content and form of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. First of all this chapter invests in those seven parts of the works that seems independent one by one and makes a brief analysis to the links between each component. In the next place it explores three formal features in great detail, which are the use of keywords, the humorous style and the polyphonic structure. The last feature is especially further brought into play in this novel. Kundera's novels were given to incomparable fascination of linguistics, flexible poetic and stylistic tension because of these formal features.On the basis of the previous article, Chapter Two further discusses the variational themes of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the character image of Tamina and the implied meaning that Tamina represents. In this novel Kundera made explanatory notes on its variational themes directly. The significance of the novel can not be generalized with a single word or sentence, instead it encompasses laughter, forgetting, Litost, borders and other key words and makes them merge together intimately with each other through those seven parts to form the theme that although can not be spoken out by words but also completely consolidated. As the protagonist of this novel, Tamina's image is so extremely important that all of the stories are different variations of her story, as well the key word forgetting which is on behalf of her image is throughout the novel and got to be explained and excavated on and on and therefore reveals some characteristics of the psychological mechanism named forgetting which were never noticed by people before.Extending out through this novel, Chapter Three focuses on the systematic features of Kundera's novels. This chapter starts from those important topics such as forgetting, the existence and the ego that Kundera values very much to try to find the secrets of the map of the existence that Kundera points out to us. Because of Kundera's severe and harsh attitudes to the publications of his works, the most complete works system that also satisfies himself mostly were finally reserved and thus consist of the close unitive world of the existence which were surprising and remarkable. In addition, the inside of this world can be divided into three parts according to the time and contents. While designing the female characters of the three novels that created in the same time with The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera devoted more mental efforts to them than ever before. Therefore, their images added more meanings to Kundera's creative themes about the existence and at the same time reflected the changes of the ideas guiding creation in literature of our novelist in this period. Among the entire novel system of Kundera, although this kind of action that explores the map of the existence through this poetic way shows us that the answer to the existence is such an ambiguous one that none of the paths that our ancestors walked through can ever provide a reference for the subsequent ones. However, the significance that the existence be explored through the way of fictions should never be negated, the novels explore the existence forgotten by people and show out the meanings of the existence of human being and the beauteousness of the existence, and this will be the victory that human being could possibly win in the last place.