In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera uses the symbol of the ring dance to highlight the sense of inclusivity and community that none of his characters can access—not Mirek on his way to jail, not Tamina in her lonely garden of the mind, not Madame Raphael looking for a dance of her own, not Jan locked perpetually inside his limited gaze. And certainly not Kundera himself, who has fallen from grace and been erased from his country's history.
Kundera says that this book is a variation on a theme, and that his theme is embodied in Tamina. Tamina herself is a study in self-imposed isolation. Maybe, then, Kundera's goal isn't to suggest a remedy for isolation; instead, he seems to want to take a dangerous journey into the heart of it, to explore just how deep it can run.
Questions About Isolation
- Why does Kundera believe that "graphomania" is so widespread?
- What is litost? Who suffers most from it in this work and why?
- In what ways is Tamina's isolation the result of the world around her? How much of her suffering is of her own making?
- Why do you suppose Kundera feels such an urge to belong to the great dance of Communism when he no longer fully agrees with it?
Chew on This
Living a life out of context wears away at personal identity.
The urge to communicate can sometimes isolate us even more.