Jan

Character Analysis

A Lost Soul

Jan's got 99 problems, and women make up about 98 of them.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is "a novel in the form of variations," with parts that are like "...the various stages of a voyage leading into the interior of a theme, the interior of a thought, the interior of a single, unique situation..." (VI.8.1). The themes, of course, are laughter and forgetting—though up until now, we've spent the bulk of our time on memory loss.

That's about to change with Jan's story. His character is a variation on a theme. We've seen versions of him in the womanizing Karel, the revisionist Mirek, and the litost-ridden student. Jan has also inherited the pensive nature of Kundera—and some of his pessimism.

Jan lives in a world he really doesn't understand or belong to. He's got a semi-permanent girlfriend called Edwige, whose company he truly enjoys. Yet they're not on the same wavelength: "They never understood each other, Edwige and he, yet they always agreed. Each interpreted the other's words in his or her own way, and there was wonderful harmony between them. Wonderful solidarity based on lack of understanding" (VII.14.13).

This lack of true sympathy between Jan and his most intimate partner is just one of many difficulties with love and sex in Jan's life. He's approaching midlife and has begun to see himself in a different light—especially where women are concerned. For Jan, it's a bit like looking at a pervy stranger:

Jan suddenly saw himself through the young woman's eyes. He saw that pitiful pantomime of his gaze and gesture, that stereotyped gesticulation emptied of all meaning by years of repetition. Having lost its spontaneity, its natural, immediate meaning, his gesture suddenly made him unbearably weary, as if six-kilo weights had been attached to his wrists. (VII.7.7)

Jan's swag isn't working out for him anymore. And it's not because women (and others) aren't responding to his charm; Jan isn't charmed by his own ways anymore. There's no value in his pick-up lines, no real desire behind his actions. There's nothing but a deep weariness and a vague sense that there must be something more to life.

The Border

Jan spends a lot of time thinking about the "image of the border" as he moves through his final days in Czechoslovakia. Sure, he's thinking about the crossing of a literal border, as he's about to do when he leaves for the United States. But there's more to the border that haunts him.

Because it's really the border. The final frontier. The checkpoint into that "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns." (Hamlet? Oh, yes, we did.) But even that version of the border isn't complex enough for Jan. There's more to it than just finality:

When things are repeated, they lose a fraction of their meaning. Or more exactly, they lose, drop by drop, the vital strength that gives them their illusory meaning. For Jan, therefore, the border is the maximum acceptable dose of repetitions. (VII.11.2)

The border represents the limit for the usefulness of all things in Jan's life. When he flubs his pick-up lines with the young lady on the train, it's not because she's not interested in him; it's because Jan himself has reached the max repetitions for that particular situation. He doesn't even believe himself anymore.

Laughter and the Edge

The border has been following Jan around for a really long time—like, since adolescence, when he began having fantasies about E.T.s with an unlimited number of erogenous zones. (We're sorry we've ruined E.T. for you.) What Jan already knew was that human existence is drudgery:

...midway through his very long journey as a virgin, he already knew what it is to be bored with the female body. Even before he had ever experienced climax, he had already arrived mentally at the end of arousal. He had experienced its exhaustibility. (VII.11.12)

It's no surprise, then, that he's thinking about Daphnis and Chloe—those mythological teenagers who experience the height of arousal just from hugging. Those two never reach exhaustion or boredom, partly because they don't have any clue about actual sex and sexual climax yet; that state of being is something that Jan can only sadly dream about.

In the meantime, Jan battles against his weariness at the absurdity of existence. Essentially, it's a battle against laughter. Jan has never liked inappropriate laughter because he knows, like Kundera does, that it brings the border ever closer.

But now, when Jan has notable encounters with laughter—like at Passer's funeral or at Barbara's orgy—he can't help but go with it. Because in the end, human life and actions really are a bit silly and pointless, as Jan's experience on the nude beach proves: "The man spoke, all the others listened with interest, and their bare genitals stared stupidly and sadly at the yellow sand" (VII.14.26).

We'd say that Jan is ready to cross that border and move on.