Pissing in a sink in The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

Question

In Milan Kundera's *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*, at some point one of the main characters - Thomas, that is a Czech doctor - in the house of one of his lovers decides to piss in the sink. The author says that this behavior was quite common among the Czech doctors in that period. Is this a real fact or not? Why? Does it have any particular meaning in this book?

Answer 1

Great question! While this claim lacks historical verification and likely does not reflect a widespread practice, its inclusion is far from trivial. The scene crystallizes Thomas’s irreverence toward social conventions, revealing a man whose desires and impulses supersede etiquette. Kundera uses this act to meditate on the interplay between bodily reality and existential philosophy: Thomas’s disregard for social norms mirrors the novel’s exploration of freedom, moral lightness, and the human propensity to act in ways that defy external judgment. In this light, the sink emerges as a symbol of autonomy and transgression, a site where ordinary life collides with the weight (or absence) of ethical and societal expectation.