Destruction in We and TULoB

In both We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera there is a constant motif of damage, and destruction, pervasive and often inexplicit. Although both writer's attitudes on the theme of destruction, damage and obliteration have some similar points, in many ways they often hold quite different views. Although obliteration is, not surprisingly, vehemently detested by both writers, destruction itself is a more controversial, subjective issue.

For the most part of We destruction is often seen as a necessary, if not essential, part of life. The destruction of the Green Wall and the planned destruction of the entire One State itself are seen as good things in the novel. D-503's message of "It is essential that we all go crazy - as soon as possible!" calls upon the readers of the necessity of damage. D-503 himself, with his eyebrows "struck through" and "a vertical scar between them", with his "sickness" is himself damaged in a way. These positive meanings given to damage and destruction are possibly because the opposite of damage and destruction, perfection and eternity, are two concepts that Zamyatin was fighting against by writing the novel.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being the themes of damage and destruction are also present, but resemble closer to the much darker concept of obliteration. For example, the destruction of the soul that Tereza sees with her mother or the destruction of the individual created by the Russians or kitsch. Of course, there is no objective definition of destruction. When Sabina puts the bowler hat on it destroys her concept of herself as it was "violence against Sabina, against her dignity as a woman" however one of the concepts of the bowler hat was that "it was a sign of her originality", that is the bowler hat creates herself at the same time. Therefore destruction, like most of the other themes in the novel, are treated with the same fence-line fuzzy subjectivism that comes out of an investigation into the postmodern universe.