SparkNotes: The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Quiz

1. What is the sole inheritance Sabina claims from her father?

(A) Her system of morality

(B) A small income which enables her to live independently

(C) Her grandfather's bowler hat

(D) Her Prague apartment

2. What is Tomas's point in the Oedipus article he wrote?

(A) The inappropriately harsh treatment of political prisoners

(B) The error of claiming innocence by virtue of ignorance

(C) The inherent philosophical mistake behind Communism and all politically leftist parties

(D) One should stay away from one's own mother

3. How do Tereza and Tomas meet?

(A) Tereza serves him at a café restaurant

(B) She is one of his mistresses from the beginning

(C) Tomas operates on her in Zurich

(D) Tomas rescues her from a police agent

4. Why does Franz and Sabina's relationship end?

(A) Franz does not understand Sabina's paintings

(B) Franz refuses to betray his wife

(C) Sabina requires more freedom and rebels when Franz leaves his wife for her

(D) Franz meets the young student with the thick glasses

5. Why does Simon write the words "He wanted the kingdom of God on earth" on Tomas's tombstone?

(A) Simon wanted vengeance on his father for abandoning him and then refusing to help the dissidents

(B) Ultimately Simon did not think a tombstone engraving mattered to Tomas

(C) Simon thought his father would have agreed with the substance of the idea if not the exact wording of it

(D) Simon suspected Tomas had turned to religion in his old age

6. Why does Tereza leave Tomas in Zurich?

(A) She cannot stand the fact that Sabina is in Switzerland as well

(B) She wants to pursue photography seriously again

(C) She wants to see the tall engineer again

(D) She wishes to set Tomas free

7. What is the nature of Tereza's relationship with the tall engineer?

(A) Tereza's affair is an experiment in treating her body lightly

(B) She knows he could help Tomas's career

(C) She wants Tomas to discover she has been unfaithful to him

(D) She seduces him out of political motivations to gain information about the police

8. Why does Franz's wife refuse to grant him a divorce?

(A) She loves him deeply and hopes he will one day return

(B) She wants to be seen as a martyr and invalidate his decision to leave

(C) She fears public knowledge of their separation

(D) She knows that, once divorced, Franz will marry Sabina

9. What can we infer about Kundera's opinion of the Grand March?

(A) Kundera disagrees with the Grand March politically, but finds it aesthetically beautiful and moving

(B) He considers it beautiful and noble, a timeless fight against injustice

(C) He considers it a necessary evil, but the only force to oppose fascism

(D) As an individualist, Kundera rejects the Grand March's politics and aesthetics

10. Which of the following characters does Sabina consider not kitsch?

(A) Her father, with his strong convictions

(B) Franz, who loves and understands her

(C) Tomas, because of his womanizing

(D) Marie-Claude, because she confronts Sabina about her husband

11. What is Tereza's relation to the human body?

(A) Before she met Tomas, Tereza was repressed, but now finds new beauty and pleasure in her body

(B) She considers the body disgusting and embarrassing and feels Tomas's womanizing equates her with other random bodies

(C) Her conservative home made her shy about her body

(D) Through Sabina's influence Tereza permanently changes her mind about the female body

12. What results from Tereza's photographs of the Soviet invasion?

(A) They help her find a job in Zurich as photographer

(B) The experience fills her with a new confidence that improves her relationship with Tomas

(C) She learns that they were likely used by Russian police

(D) They inspire her to remain politically active and dissident for the rest of her life

13. Why does Tereza fall in love with Tomas instantly?

(A) A series of coincidences (the book on his table, the Beethoven playing) convince her that the meeting was fated

(B) After being seduced by him she imagines herself in love to maintain her self-respect

(C) Tereza does not fall in love with Tomas instantly but pretends to, so that she can fulfill her dream of moving to Prague

(D) She is vulnerable at the moment, recovering from an unhappy affair with the tall engineer

14. What is the secret behind all of Sabina's paintings?

(A) She refuses to paint anything ugly she sees in the world

(B) She has learned a breathtaking realist technique at art school

(C) Sabina always paints and eroticizes the human body

(D) All of her paintings are double exposures, with a secret world emerging behind the main scene

15. Why does Tomas lose his position as surgeon?

(A) He seduces both the chief surgeon's wife and daughter

(B) He makes an operating mistake one day when he is thinking about Tereza

(C) For the political trouble his Oedipus article brought him

(D) Because he has been actively working as a dissident for years

16. Why do Tomas and Tereza move to the country?

(A) Tereza needs to escape Prague and hopes to finally end Tomas's affairs

(B) Tomas's health is failing rapidly

(C) The police will not let him keep his job as window washer

(D) The tall engineer from the secret police contacts Tereza and tells her of the black-mail photos

17. Why does Tomas's son contact him after so many years?

(A) He has been longing to meet his father and win his approval

(B) He needs Tomas's signature and thinks to play on Tomas's sentiments in order to obtain it

(C) He needs money and thinks Tomas's new wife Tereza is rich

(D) He plans to force Tomas to return to his mother

18. Why is Tereza fascinated with the strangely shaped woman at the sauna?

(A) The woman looks like Tereza's mother

(B) She knows Tomas has had an affair with the woman

(C) She sees in the woman an example of the mismatch of body and soul

(D) She wants to photograph the woman

19. Why does Tomas return to Prague from Zurich?

(A) Once Sabina leaves Switzerland all of his ties to the country are broken

(B) He is doomed by compassion and cannot cope with the thought of Tereza suffering

(C) He finds he does not experience the bliss of freedom he anticipated

(D) He is contacted by his son

20. How does Franz continue living after Sabina leaves?

(A) He moves back in with his wife, defeated

(B) Her cruelty offends him deeply and he ceases to love her

(C) Meeting the student girl with thick glasses causes him to forget Sabina

(D) He imagines her presence with him at all times and idealizes their love

21. What is the essence of Tomas's womanizing?

(A) He approaches women as he does patients, with a curiosity to find what is individual and different about each

(B) He hates all women and sees the conquest as empowering

(C) He purposefully makes Tereza jealous to prove she loves him

(D) He is searching for one ideal woman he has never found

22. Why does Sabina doubt herself at times when she reaches America?

(A) She realizes that she has been in love with Tomas all along

(B) Outside of Europe, she finds herself no longer able to paint

(C) She wonders whether her betrayals will ever end

(D) She regrets leaving Franz

23. Why do Tomas's colleagues at the hospital wish he would sign the retraction?

(A) They deeply disagree with his Oedipus article

(B) They do not want to accept him as morally superior or different from them

(C) They wish he would remain at the hospital, no matter at what cost

(D) They resent Tereza's influence on Tomas

24. Why does Franz go to Cambodia and pick a fight in the street?

(A) He is deeply personally moved by the Cambodian crisis

(B) His young student mistress wants to go

(C) He thinks these actions would make Sabina proud

(D) He regrets his behavior to his wife and is seeking death

25. In the end, which is the better path, lightness or weight?

(A) Lightness—Tomas's love for Tereza destroys his life

(B) Weight—Sabina's lightness is morally despicable in the author's eyes

(C) A third option as embodied by the character of Karenin the dog

(D) Either or neither—none of the characters live without any regret or doubts, but each finds some meaning and consistency in his or her life

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