Word: jakub
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...scientist who practices personal eugenics by inseminating unwitting patients with his own sperm. A rich American expatriot named Bartleff dispenses fistfuls of U.S. half dollars while preaching a Christianity of joy in which saintly asceticism is practiced out of sheer lust for adulation. Kundera also introduces a character named Jakub, a former political prisoner who believes that the only true freedom in his country is the freedom to commit suicide. To remind himself of this pathetic option, he keeps a poisoned pill with him at all times...
Lethal Dose. Chekhov's dictum about never showing a gun in the first act unless it is used in the third applies to poisoned pills as well. Jakub's lethal dose leads to a death that cries out to be interpreted as either an accidental murder or a murderous accident. Playing existential detective, Kundera shows how all the major characters are implicated. But despite some amusing farcical turns, the verdict is heavily weighted toward a formulation that amounts to a facile existential copout: we are all murderers...