We live in a world where so many different types of literature. If we look at the three branches of literature, poetry, prose and drama, those branches also have sub-branches, and on and on. Sometimes, from being presented all these different types of literature, we tend to forget that each type differs stylistically from other types, hence their classification as different types of literature, and among all these types of literature stands out one: the novel. One of the most common and widespread of all types of literature, novels can be found anywhere. It’s become so common that people just read it to, well, read it. As interesting a read as a particular novel may be, what’s more interesting than that (and what adds complexity to the novel) is the form which novels take, and, in particular, characteristics that it possesses that are in plain sight within the text, yet ignored in favour of just enjoying the story. According to Mikhail Bakhtin in his work “The Dialogic Imagination”, one of the main characteristics of a novel is what we call “heteroglossia”. Mikhail Bakhtin describes it as the “multiplicity of social voices and a wide variety of their links and interrelationships”. Simply put, it is the multiplicity of forms within the text that allow the text to be more far-reaching, and convey its message better. But why would, for example, Milan Kundera use it in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”? Because this multiplicity in form allows the text’s author, Kundera in this case, the fluidity to ease into explanations about what happened (or what is going to happen as sometimes the author does it pre-emptively) in order for the reader to better understand what the novel is about, “an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.” First, let us look at where the multiplicity in the text and its form lies. In terms of its genre, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is somewhat similar to Jostein Gaarder’s “Sophie’s World” in that it rocks back and forth in between academic discussions, like politics or philosophy, as seen in the explanation of “kitsch”, and then back to the story / stories. The genre of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is complex yet easy to understand. In a way, there’s a sort-of “intertextuality” going on when the narrative shifts from the lives of the characters like Tomas and Tereza, the emotional anchors of the novel which still grounds the novel into a level at which the reader will feel things while reading the text, then into a philosophical discussion on the nature of “kitsch”, while at the same time still brushing a little bit on the novel’s historical and political context as per its setting. As we can see, just from here, we can already see the multiplicity in form (specifically in genre) that Mikhail Bakhtin was referring to when he was describing “heteroglossia” in a novel. Next, let us examine the style that Milan Kundera used to write “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. As we have stated in the previous paragraph, Milan Kundera made us of myriad genres in his writing of the novel. In a way, this does affect the narrative of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. The style employed in the novel, specifically in its narration, is considered non-linear. First of all, the plot itself is not just one big plot but rather several smaller story arcs that eventually interweave. Next, we can also say it’s non-linear because there are rapid-fire shifts in genre which, in turn, disrupt the flow of the story, but somehow, Kundera managed to maintain some sort of continuity in the novel throughout the disruptions because he found a way to make it all connect, that is, he often repeated or paraphrased his own lines in other sections of his book. For example, when Kundera is talking about how Tomas imagines Tereza, she is referred to as “a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent down-stream for Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed.” This same line recurs in varying forms by way of rephrasing or changing a few words throughout the entire text of the novel. Now that we’ve found the heteroglossia in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, let us identify the use of this as a function of storytelling within the novel. As previously stated, the novel, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become. That brings us back to Mikhail Bakhtin in his work, “The Dialogic Imaginations”, where he said that heteroglossia is the “multiplicity of social voices and a wide variety of their links and interrelationships”. The multiplicity in form in both genre and style allow the author some room to conduct this investigation by using different “voices” in the form of his text. The novel does, indeed, “speak” in many different voices. It’s not just the characters. The author also speaks in a different tone through the other parts of the novel. He speaks in a different tone when narrating, when philosophizing and when discussing history and politics. This brings us to Kundera’s investigation on human life through the novel. The humans in Kundera’s novel, the characters, are described by Kundera as his own “unrealized possibilities”, and that each of them “cross a border” that he has “circumvented”. The multiplicity of voices in the text, manifested, in turn, through the multiplicity of genres and styles is, in fact, Kundera’s investigation on human life in the trap it has become. The title of the novel, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, keys us into what kind of “trap” human life has become. This investigation has to do with weight, the lightness or the heaviness of something, and here, that “something” is life. There are two philosophers in particular that Kundera is trying to contradict through this novel: Neitzsche and Parmenides. Neitzsche explains the idea of “eternal return”, how our lives occur more than once, which Kundera contradicts by saying that we only live once, therefore life is light. Parmenides, on the other hand, talks about lightness being sweet, which Kundera disagrees with, saying that lightness is not sweet, it is bitter, it is unbearable. This is the trap that human life has become. Our limited existence forces us to make a choice, and leave the other choices behind, therefore restricting our freedom of choice to allowing us only to pick one. What makes this bitter is that we are left powerless against this, and sometimes, we even regret making one particular choice when we could’ve made so many others. Our lives sometimes begin teetering over the edge, and then we start having bitter regrets, leaving us thinking “what if?” for the rest of our lives. The multiplicity in voices and form enables this investigation to take place by allowing discussions on Parmenides and Neitzsche to disrupt the actual plot of the book. Kundera, then, must have chosen the heteroglossic form because he wanted to actually discuss these things. The novel, with its multiple voices and forms, becomes “open”. In that sense, it’s not strictly just text for the sake of having text. The multiplicity allows a discussion to take place within the confines of the story, simultaneously, because these characters’ journeys represent the actual unbearable lightness of our lives, the trap our lives have become: limited, cursed with regrets, not able to move forward because it’s this lightness is weight. In fact, it is a heavy weight because of the limits placed on our existences. In conclusion, the heteroglossic form utilized by Kundera in the novel portrayed in the multiplicity of voices and forms, is actually a way to conduct the investigation on human life and the trap it has become: limited because of the limits placed on it, and this limitation only serves to make life unbearable.