Sections 1-8 of The Unbearable Lightness of Being's part two "Soul and Body" trace the origins of Tereza and the relationship between the soul, the body, lightness and weight in her early life and in her mother's life. Section 1 shows "the irreconciliable duality of the body and soul" by showing how the body, when under neglect, begins giving the soul pain. It is almost as if the body and the soul are a married couple. The soul and the body cannot be the same, yet they cannot be separate or opposite. In We there seems to be the a similar relation, because although the soul, through the use of the root of -1, is seen as transcendant of physical values (the domain of the body) it is also shown as confined to the body as once a certain area of the body (the section of the brain cauterized during the Great Operation) is gone, the soul is gone with it (although it is interesting to note how D-503 still remembers the number 112, the number of the auditorium where his soul first emerged).
This group of sections, which seems to investigate the body primarily, also portrays two schools of thought about the body's purpose. One school of thought sees the body as "an instrument panel", significant only as a function or a machine and eternally recurring. Tereza's mother harbours this school of thought. She constantly displays her nudity, breaks wind in public and shows her false teeth to everyone. To her these movements are no more shocking than seeing an engine blow steam or a wobbly replacement pipe (again there is a good connection to We). She sees the world as "a vast concentration camp of bodies, one like the next, with souls invisible". Notice that by downgrading the value of the body she, and therefore the school of thought she embodies, also downgrades the value of the soul.
The second school of thought is the one which Tereza more easily aligns with, that is besides being a function there is something special about the body which lets it be able to be classified along with her soul as what makes up herself. This can be seen when she looks in the mirror in Section 3. When she does this "she forgot that the nose was merely the nozzle of a hose that took oxygen to the lungs; she saw it as the true expression of her nature". Souls are not invisible but reside in the body ("the bowels" in the case of TULoB) and can be seen. Tereza, as the representation of this school of thought, does not like the body being seen as identical and thus insignificant (compare to We Record 2's "We are so identical" passage) and thus tries to rid her body of her mother's presence. Therefore this school of thought subscribes to the uniqueness of the body, and that it is attached to the transcendant soul in some way.
Section 1 sees a painful argument emerging between Tereza's soul and body, which ends in the presence of Tomas. The pain that the body gave Tereza's soul was caused by a neglect and distancing of the soul from the body. Is it true, then, that Tomas causes soul and body to reconcile? Section 8 provides the answer. Throughout Sections 2-7 we have seen a struggle for Tereza to see the importance and the unique significance of her body. In order to be significant her body must be unique, therefore it must deviate away from the light world of her mother (in other words her mother's school of thought must be betrayed; similar but definitely not identical to how the Mephi must betray the One State in We.) Books were this betrayal and Tomas was the symbol of these books. Therefore Tomas has made Tereza apparently achieve the significance of her body that her soul had longed for, and thus the body is no longer the soul's prison. However, this mindset is rigorously challenged later in "Soul and Body", where Tomas's infidelities challenge the uniqueness of the body (while they leave the uniqueness of the soul relatively unscathed).
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