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The Role of Animals in the Unbearable Lightness of Being and Poems New and Collected

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Since animals, usually pets, are sometimes an essential part of one's life, it is not surprising that we find frequent references to its role in works of social realism, such as Wislawa Szymborska's Poems New and Collected and Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being. Animals in literature could be used to symbolize all sorts of things, but in particular, animals may represent the personality of a character. This is because as humans and animals co-exist in the same atmosphere, certain aspects of a character reveal themselves in the compassion or even hatred towards the animal. Since animals are often known to trigger the interests of humans, the attitude of the humans towards the animals contributes much to character revelation. Both …show more content…

A life that never ends?
He'd turn his ruddy rump as if to say
Such life he neither bans nor recommends
We can see the monkey as a god now, a figure that even has power to give "life that never ends," such a contrast after the total mistreatment, above. We see how the animals determine human characteristics: either overly mistreating, or overly obsessed.
In the poem, Cat in an empty apartment, Szymborska again criticizes the uncaring characteristic of humans and the role of animals in the poem as a mere irritation or a vexation.
Die – you can't do that to a cat
Since what can a cat do in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub against the furniture? …
From this we can perceive that animals in Szymborska's poems serve to prove that in their co-existence with humans, they are treated unfairly and the human characteristics of cruel superiority over animals are evident in the works.
Later in the Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tomas and Tereza moves to a collective farm in Rural Czechoslovakia after the Soviet takeover of 1969 to avoid the hardships caused by Tomas' criticism of the former Czechoslovak communist regime. There, they befriend the chairman of the collective farm, who like Tereza, shares a close relationship with an animal companion: a pig named Mephisto, which has been "raised like a dog." Even though in the farms animals are purposely raised to be slaughtered for eating use, Mephisto is treated like his best friend, even going so far as to imagine

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