Reading Response #7

So I'm still plowing through The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Yup, it's pretty much taken me this entire semester to read... So Milan Kundera, who is now in my opinion one of the most interesting authors I've ever read, brought up another extremely interesting idea. Where does he come up with all this? Every page I turn it's like another new idea is popping out at me. This week the idea of sexuality came up. Now, most of his book has had to do with sex or some form of love, but I never really talked about it because I didn't think it would be appropriate for school. But then I thought we're in grade 12 now anyways, and everyone's practically an adult, so why not. While I was reading the subject of men who sleep with a lot of women came up. One of the main characters, Tomas, is a womanizer who sleeps with hundreds of women. Kundera was saying that there are 2 main categories that womanizers fall into. The first is a man who sleeps with lots of women because he's looking for that "something" that is always eluding him... He's looking for that one quality that will make him fall in love, and looks for it through sex, because that's when everyone is their most vulnerable. He never finds it though, because what he's really looking for is a quality in himself that he in fact does not possess, and so he is never satisfied by his conquests. This is the womanizer that everybody feels sorry for because they know he'll never attain his goal. Women throw themselves at him in the hopes of being his missing piece. The second one is the man who sleeps with lots of women because he wants to find the differences between each. Everyone has a million things that are the same as the next person, and they're looking for that 1/1 000 000 difference between each. Again, sex is when people are the most vulnerable so they are always sleeping with people to get to know what makes them unique from everybody else. Kundera was saying that this womanizer people don't like as much, and feel less empathetic towards them, but in my opinion I think they're the better one. I mean, isn't it kind of sad that the first one is just like a dog chasing his tail, always searching for something they can't attain. Why would you do something you know doesn't work again and again and again? The second one could be viewed as selfish and somewhat self centered, never thinking about the emotions of others, but in my opinion I don't think they do it maliciously. They're being like a weird kind of scientist.