cherry’s Reviews > The Unbearable Lightness of Being > Status Update

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Man-kind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

In Tereza's eyes, books were
the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the
world of crudity surrounding her... They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found
unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk
down the street with a book under her arm.