1.
Stalin’s son dies running towards an electrical fence. Kundera believes that he commieted suicide due to his inability to stand the situation he was in. As the author describes “he could no longer stand to watch the poles of human existence come so close to each other as to touch,m when there was no longer any difference between sublime and squalid, angel and fly, god and shit” This could be interpreted as Yakov growing bored and tired of the monotonous life that he was carrying or better said, he lost contact with reality and no longer trusted his senses or what was going on around him. He actually commited suicide because he was living among shit” and “shit” was all he knew by then. Therefore god became shit, life, love everything became shit.
2.
Kundera compares the death of Yakov with the “idiotic” and senseless deaths that Russians as well as germans had in order to expand their border. The death of Yakov was everything because he died for himself. The death of others was worthless because they died for something else rather than for themselves.
3.
Kundera considers yakovs death as an acot of valor as well as liberation. The reasons for which yakov took his own life seem to be justified from Kundera’s point of view.
4.
For Yakov, the reclusion that he endured during his prison stay makes him turn his world and reality into shit. The author describes “If the son god [which was yakov because Stalin was praised as a god] can undergo judgement for shit, the human existence looses its dimensions and becomes unbearably light.” Yakov did not care for anything else ath the moment of his death but for the lightness of his own being, therefore his freedom. In a world where god and shit was the same thing, this man only craving is for death which in the end liberates him from the torture of living among shit.
6.
Kitsch is a way to interpret the vulgar art and inferior art. It has an aesthetic purpose and it relates to Sabina by reminding her of her unwanted past.
