The Vegetarian first edition English
Though the title of this Man Booker International Prize-winning novel is The Vegetarian, it is not about vegetarianism at all. Rather it is about mental health, child abuse, choice, and conformance to norms.
We follow a woman named Yeong-hye who decides to stop eating meat after having horrible dreams. This decision of hers, especially in a predominantly meat-eating culture like Korea, fragments the family with far reaching effect. The story is in three parts, each part from the perspective of three people in her life. The first part titled The Vegetarian is narrated in first person by her husband who is always referred to formally as Mr Cheong, in a way keeping him apart from the intimate family structure. The second part is from the perspective of her unnamed brother-in-law and is titled Mongolian Mark, and the third is in first-person narrative by Yeong-hye’s sister, In-hye.
Seoul panoramic view – a megacity of 10 million, pronounced 'soul’
Though it causes so much tumult in the family, no one tries to discover the reason for Yeong-hye’s decision to turn vegetarian. Her family, especially her abusive father, tries to force her to eat meat with disastrous effect. She mentions many times that she has a dream, but we are left to discover the dream and the possible reason for the decision, in the few portions in the book where Yeong-hye is given a voice.
The abuse she has suffered and the trauma that she has gone through comes out in bits and pieces. Her husband abandons her; her brother-in-law sexually abuses her when she is at her most vulnerable emotional point, and her parents refuse to have anything to do with her. At a time, when she needs the most support, she has only her sister In-hye who stands by her and attempts to make sense of her situation. As Yeong-hye descends further into her insanity, In-hye realises that it could have been herself in the same situation if the circumstances had been different.
The translation was very patchy with syntax errors and use of very British slang which jarred with the text. Translations of novels are always difficult to judge especially as we have no knowledge of the original text. Does the translator replace words in one language with those of another or does he/she smooth out the narrative with the usages of the translated language? Then what happens to the idioms and speech conventions of the original language? Whatever the case, the story should have a smooth flow, which was missing. It could have been subjected to a tighter editing, and that felt strange as the Man Booker International is for books in translation. One could not agree with the reviewer of the New Statesman whose commendation was: “elegantly translated into bone-spare English”
In the end, it is a disturbing book, which almost none of the KRG members liked, but it still led to very lively discussion and debate as we tried to make sense of it.
Author Bio (by Pamela)
Han Kang Dec 2017 – the South Korean writer whose novel in translation The Vegetarian won her the 2016 International Man Booker prize
Han Kang was born in Kwangju, South Korea, on the 27th of November, 1970. From the age of 10, she grew up in Seoul after her family moved there in 1980, shortly after Chun Doo-hwan, a general nicknamed the Butcher, seized power in a coup and declared martial law. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University.
She made her literary debut as a poet by publishing five poems, including Winter in Seoul in 1993.
She began her career as a novelist the next year by winning the 1994 Seoul Shinmin Spring Literary Contest with Red Anchor. She published her first short story collection entitled Yeosu in 1995. She participated in the University of Iowa International Writing Program (https://iwp.uiowa.edu/) for three months in 1998 with support from the Arts Council of Korea.
Her publications include a short story collection and a poem collection, too. A detailed list** is given below.
She won the 25th Korean Novel Award with the novel Baby Buddha in 1999; the 2000 Today's Young Artist Award by Culture Ministry Korea; the 2005 Isang Literary Award with Mongol Spot, and the 2010 Dongri Literary Award with Ink and Blood.
She was awarded the Manhae Literary Prize for the novel Human Acts in 2014. Her recent novel Farewell won the Kim Yuljong Literary Prize 2018. The Vegetarian, the novel we're reading today won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, the first Korean book to win this prize. Her most recent novel, I Do Not Bid Farewell, was awarded Medici Prize in France in 2023.
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Han Kang (right) with translator Deborah Smith after winning the Man Booker International prize in 2016. Photograph - Alastair Grant
She won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, being cited for “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” That was a first for an Asian woman.
Her family is noted for its literary background. Her father, her elder brother, and younger brother were novelists. In fact, her younger brother was not only a novelist, but a cartoonist also. Her father quit his teaching job to become a full-time writer four months before the Kwangju Uprising, which was a pro-democracy movement that ended in the massacre of students and civilians. She discovered an album in her home about the massacre which was secretly circulated. This impacted her thinking on humanity and her literary works.
She married a literary critic and divorced him later. She has a son who joined her in running a bookstore in Seoul which was closed in 2024. She suffers from migraine and feels that God has given her this to keep her humble.
She has accomplished much, but is in pain.
**Publications of Han Kang
Novels in Korean
(1995) Love in Yeosu
(1998) Black Deer
(2000) My Woman's Fruits
(2002) Your Cold Hands
(2007) The Vegetarian
(2010) The Wind Blows, Go
(2011) Greek Lessons
(2012) Fire Salamander.
(2014) A Boy Comes
(2016) White
(2021) We Do Not Part
Novels In translation
(2015) The Vegetarian
(2023) Greek Lessons
(2016) Human Acts
(2017) The White Book
(2025) We Do Not Part
Short fiction
Collections
My name is Sunflower, 2002
The red flower story, 2003,
Thunder little fairy, lightning little fairy, 2007
Tear box, 2008
Stories
The Middle Voice, 2023
Heavy Snow 2024
Poetry
I put dinner in the drawer, 2013
Essays
Love and things surrounding love, 2003
A song to sing calmly, 2007
DREs (Diligent Reader Exercises) for KRG Readers
1.
(a) State some medical ailments explicitly named in the novel, from which Yeong-hye is suffering.
Ans: anorexia nervosa, schizophrenia, convulsions.
(b) From her symptoms name some other possible medical ailments you can deduce she could be suffering from also.
Ans:
- psychosis (delusions and hallucinations),
- catatonia (a state of muscular rigidity and stupor found in schizophrenia),
- PTSD (nightmares and violent reaction to touch imply past trauma),
dissociative disorder (detaches herself from her identity, body and reality in Part 3),
- depression (mental state of gloom and despondency) and
- suicidal ideation (deep despair, self-harm and wanting to die),
2. From your clear reading of the text, find some English syntactical flaws you detected in the translation by Deborah Smith, and give the corrected version of it, as if your were the editor. Two or three are fine.
(i) p,91
why did you use to bare your breasts to the sunlight…
Correct would be:
why did you used to bare your breasts to the sunlight; or better,
Why would you bare your breasts in the sunlight? (Implied habit)
(ii)p.92
“I’m just going to pop to the studio.
Correct would be:
I’m just going to pop over to the studio;; or
I’m going to swing by the studio (implying a quick visit)
(iii) p.34 (8 lines from the bottom)
Taking in her nicely filled-out figure, big, double-lidded eyes, and demure manner of speaking, I sorely regretted the many things it seemed I’d ended up losing somehow or other, to have left me in my current plight.
The last part is a dangling construction that does not sit with the earlier ‘I regretted many things.’
The better sentence would be
Noticing her buxom figure, unusual double-lidded eyes, and demure manner of speaking, I regretted the many things I had lost out on, resulting in my current plight.
This is more tight, less meandering, and keeps the tone of wistful regret.
(iv)
This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated.
Better is: It was a body stripped of all desire. (Stronger verb and elimination of passive voice to make it more concise, more literary
(v) Translator mixes up foot and arm between pal and bal in Korean, so one learns from other sources.
Others suggested by Saras:
(a) Enabled Yeong-hye to schuck off social constraints.,..
Better is: Enabled Yeong-hye to throw off social constraints.,..
Shucking is associated with removing the outer husks of grain; corn shucking comes to mind.
(b) Marked with nothing but the breathing of the three people, an amount of time passed that would be impossible to measure.
Clumsy. ‘Impossible to measure’ implies an infinite amount.
Said more simply: A long time passed marked by nothing but the breathing of three people.
Deborah Smith has often followed the original slavishly, and the translation fails to sound natural in English.
(c) Saras gave a couple of examples of colloquial Brit speak that clash with the tenor of this austere novel:
(p.13) Oh good, so that’s me sorted then
(p.34) not doing an awful lot of anything.
3. When Yeong-hye says ‘I had a dream’ at six points in the novel she seems to be using the words from Martin Luther King’s famous speech. But what did she actually dream about? Give your 3 best guesses.
(i) Most probable antecedent in her life was the childhood incident where she was forced to eat the meat of a dog that bit her, after it had been tortured, killed, and roasted. She is haunted by that in her dream.
(ii) She has arrived at a conclusion that society is filled with violence to creatures, and gets inspired by the pre-existing tradition of Buddhist diet to adopt vegetarianism. That coupled with her growing insanity makes her think of herself as a tree. She is dreaming of herself as a tree all the time and dissolving into nature.
(iii) She is revolting against the early cruelty of her father’s violence toward her; coupled with a conviction that all society is guilty of continuing that violence through the unthinking slaughter of animals and meat-eating. She has conflated those two elements, and her dreams are about how to cleanse herself of the violence, and her own past guilt of meat-eating, about getting rid of bloodiness.
Thomo
Joe played the voice file that Thomo had sent in advance, knowing he had to be away today for his brother’s surgery.
A reader exclaimed that the author’s description of ‘caramelized deep-fried belly pork’ and ‘wafer-thin slices of beef seasoned with black pepper and sesame oil’ made her feel hungry. So yummy. That bibimbap is really nice, said Priya.
Thomo had some brief comments. He confessed at the outset, that he didn't like the novel, and admitted he didn't finish the book. Thomo wondered how a book like this could have even been shortlisted, let alone won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. He didn’t consider The Vegetarian worthy of that illustrious prize.
His selected portion covered the conversation between husband and wife, where the wife tells the husband for the very first time that she has become a vegetarian, and thrown out all the meat and eggs, and even the milk, from the fridge.
Buddhist meal in a Korean restaurant, cost about 30 USD
Thomo said his daughter Miriam became a vegetarian at age 17 or thereabouts. She remained vegetarian for years, including the two years she spent studying in the UK. When she got engaged to Rohan, her brother-in-law, Aaron mentioned in his speech at their engagement how the vegetarianism would work out in the marriage for ‘Miriam was a vegetarian, whereas Rohan was a carnivore.’
Miriam remained a vegetarian long after the marriage, but a few years ago she began to eat beef, and only beef, following medical advice to compensate for protein deficiency.
In the passage Thomo read, one comes across an explanation for people becoming vegetarian because of medical advice to counter allergies. In Miriam's case, it was the other way around.
Arundhaty
Arundhaty also admitted that she didn't care for this book much because (1) it condemns vegetarianism throughout, and (2) only if you have got some strange weird dream can you possibly become such a staunch vegetarian.
She also did not finish the book but read various parts of it selectively. She chose the particular piece because that's where this whole sordid drama begins, starting with a dream that can affect a person's entire life, transporting her to an entirely different world.
Her simple act of rejecting the consumption of meat makes her husband frustrated, and violent, as he sees it as a rejection of a wife’s duties, and a refusal to conform to a traditional gender role.
It also highlights how in Korea, patriarchy dominates the whole of society. Her husband is only worried that he would lose favour with his boss when she accompanies him to a formal dinner where she confesses she has given up meat-eating.
This passage also highlights the societal pressures to conform, the manner in which the boss's wife passes a judgment with total impunity, and rubbishes the whole idea of vegetarianism. Her husband decides that she is just being stubborn., but he is embarrassed by her behaviour in front of his bosses.
Company meal with corporate bosses in Korea – Seokyong Lee for NYTimes
Joe said he’s had the experience going with KumKum to a restaurant in Seoul where bosses from a Korean company called them for dinner. They did not object at all when Kumkum turned around and said, no, I can't eat this, I can't eat that. ‘Oh, we can order some Buddhist diet, no problem, was what they said.’ And straightaway they ordered Buddhist diet which is standard fare in Seoul.
However this passage makes out that bosses in Korea are extremely intolerant. And their wives are even more intolerant than the bosses. Joe has not found that consonant with his own experience of bosses at a top corporation in Seoul. But then, a novelist can make up whatever story they want. Han Kang wants to build a case that this girl has been harassed throughout, has been put down, has been traumatised, etc.
Joe said we really don't know what is at the bottom of Yong-hye’s problem. Han Yang is making a case that this vegetarianism is some kind of weird thing in Korea. It is true standard Korean food is heavily meat-based. But 5% of Koreans are vegetarian and strong Buddhist traditions have promoted plant-based food.
Arundhaty said the human body doesn't need meat like that – think of all the Jain people living quite healthy in India. There are other ways of getting the protein you need. Indeed, Joe heard a lecture by the prominent Indian rice researcher is Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, where he said there is no more protein rich food than ‘muringaka’, the humble drum stick.
Saras while going around Korea found it very difficult. At many restaurants she ate only potato chips. Same in Cambodia where she lived on KFC fries, and couldn't eat anything else, and even that could have have been fried in beef tallow!
She’d look for South Indian restaurants and travel miles to find one. She was sick and tired of eating banana chips. In one place, she found a Punjabi guy who had a dhaba and got roti and dal.
The husband of Yeong-hye cannot even imagine anybody being a vegetarian. He's such a fanatical non-vegetarian. This woman was not altogether there, said Priya, but she cooks so well.
This is actually the beginning of her psychological disorder when she starts throwing everything meat-like out of the fridge. .
The book is not about vegetarianism as such, it’s more a statement on mental health. That emphasis is why the book won the Booker, according to Priya. One can appreciate the way the progress of the disease is revealed gradually. The reader feels sorry for her and how her brother-in-law takes advantage of her.
Some readers had to skip since they found the content horrifying or even disgusting.
Han Kang triggered a discussion on mental illness. It's coming out in the open now in many professions and areas of life. For Han Kang to go into the mind of somebody who is having an acute psychological disorder and portray it, must have been very difficult. It's easy to understand why a lot of people don't like this book. Mental illness is very complex and many don't get it.
The brother-in-law in his art world is on his own path. Art was his life and artists are often bizarre in their behaviour; and will seem crazy to the average householder living a nine-to-five life.
What he is doing with his nude body painting and camera work to record it, is his art; it’s not for sex he is pursuing the art. The filming of it from various angles, getting collages, combining the male and female bodies wreathed in flower paintings is his creative exploration of an art form which he hopes to exhibit.
Ultimately, the brother-in-law does take advantage of Yeong-hye. It may not be rape but she is not in any condition to resist, or to say no.
We will talk about it when we reach that point of the story. In this book there are the three points of view expressed in the three sections of the novel.
Joe
For Joe the novel did not make for pleasant reading. The Nobel committee praised The Vegetarian for the author’s ‘intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life’ – but this reader found almost nothing poetic in the descriptions of nature or of the people and the incidents.
The best feature is the devotion of In-hye to her sister and her determination to save her. This is the story of a woman, the younger sister Yeong-hye, afflicted by a host of mental diseases; only three are given their medical names in the book: anorexia nervosa, schizophrenia and convulsions. Others such as psychosis (delusions and hallucinations), catatonia (schizophrenia characterised by periodic states of rigidity or immobility), PTSD (nightmares and violent reaction to touch imply past trauma), dissociative disorder (detaches herself from her identity, body and reality in Part 3), depression and suicidal ideation (deep despair, self-harm and wanting to die), etc. – may only be deduced from the symptoms described.
She is a victim of patriarchy and while the passage Joe chose shows a father using force to feed meat to a convinced vegetarian daughter – that may not be the cause of her peculiar behaviour which culminates in self-identification with trees. The hallucination goes so far as to cause her to make headstands for long hours, imagining herself as a tree trunk rooted in the soil. She is doing this in the hope that flowers will bloom from her crotch. She is persuaded she needs nothing solid to eat, just water will do, and the sun will produce the photosynthesis to make her bloom and live, not as a human, but as a tree.
Along the path of her gradual disintegration as a human being, she engages willingly in having her naked body painted by her brother-in-law who is a an artist specialising in outré videos. At first it was his fascination at seeing she had a Mongolian mark above her buttock; later he wants to paint a man also with bright flowers and have the two of them enact intimate scenes. The alluring form of male and female anatomies covered in spectacular flowers would make for an artistic video on a semi-pornographic theme.
It all goes wrong and ends up in sexual intercourse with her own brother-in-law. That destroys her sister’s marriage and also sets in motion the ultimate degeneration of Yeong-hye after she is hospitalised in the third and final part of the book. This part taxes the reader who yearns to find some hope of salvation, or at least a sublimated self-awakening of a human who is disintegrating and disappearing into a ghostly frazzled shadow of her former self.
We are told when the mind is gone there is no human left. But here we see something much worse as the residue of mental affliction: a total absurdity inside a human body.
There is no relief. We are watching a descent into the inferno described by Dante, but everything is bleak: the visage of splintering Yeong-hye, the other patients in the hospital, the doctor, the sister, … We feel the trees of the mountain outside the sanatorium are moving inward to strangle the life of humans, like “a massive animal, wild and savage.” Pessimism is a mild word for the feeling in the reader’s mind at the end of the novel; it is not a philosophical pessimism, but a leaden, cheerless, bleakness that descends on everything. It is a wonder the author could endure the writing of such a grim and cheerless novel.
Coming to the passage Joe read, it is the scene where the father actually stuffs meat into her mouth. It's pretty rough at this point. People are being not just intolerant, but taking their intolerance to the point of wanting to completely dominate and overcome others, and they turn violent in the process.
It's a family setting. Yeong-hye’s father is there. He thinks it is ridiculous that his daughter has stopped eating meat. But it's not ridiculous at all in the Korean setting, as far as Joe knows, for Korea does cater to vegetarianism. Their Buddhist heritage itself respects vegetarianism. There are restaurants in Seoul there that serve pure veg food. But meat eating is entrenched in standard Korean diets. And the father won't tolerate his daughter going against that convention. He takes a slice of pork and smashes it against her daughter's lip.
Korean Pork Belly Bulgogi meat of the kind that Yeong-hye's father ‘mashed to a pulp’ on her lips
But she spits it out, and then grabs a knife and hurts herself. Whether this traumatic incident brought on a mental imbalance in her later years or not, we all agree it is an act of intolerance that humans should revolt from. We witness the beginnings of abnormal happenings later as the book progresses.
The easy laid-back part of the book was the second section, where Yeong-hye seems to be quite at home with having her body painted with flowers by her artist brother-in-law. She's calm and does not act abnormal at all. She goes along with the body-painting and the photography. She understands what's happening, and participates freely. She knows about the mark on her, that Mongolian mark, and that people are curious about it.
Pamela said in the second part she may be acting in a calm and normal way, interacting, but it is also unnatural.
Why is it unnatural? - asked Joe. Painting bodies in that culture is quite common, as it is in other East Asian cultures like Japan. In another novel that we read, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, Nakamura the Emperor’s ex-gardener paints a Horimono on Sun Ling’s back – it’s a tattoo, a bit more invasive than painting.
So those cultures have that, it’s nothing so unusual.You can't judge everything by some preconception we have from our own culture.
Yeong-hye had improved after going to stay in her sister’s house where she lets her be herself, a vegetarian with strange obsessions. She's arrived at some kind of peace, but she's still not normal. She's still in her own world.
Saras read the happenings in a completely different way. It's interesting how everybody Saras has spoken to has had a very different take on the book. That's the beauty of the novel. Most people have not liked it because of this very overt sexual content, particularly in the second half. And secondly, the mental health aspect, having to wade through all the bizarre behaviour.
Both the men are attracted to the other sister, meaning In-hye’s husband is attracted to his wife’s sister, Yeong-hye.
And the sister's husband is attracted to this one. Yes, to each other.
Yeong-hye's husband a very practical man and leaves her. He wants somebody who will make his life very easy, do everything at home, and cook and wash and iron. He was attracted to the other sister, In-hye who fulfilled such mundane domestic duties without any problem. In-hye is described in physical terms.
Saras
Saras chose to read from the part where readers get an inkling about why Yeong-hye makes the momentous decision to stop eating meat, eventually refusing to have even eggs and milk. We get a glimpse of the childhood trauma that seems to be the root cause of her mental illness, combined with the physical abuse from her violent father which she suffered as a child. The physical abuse comes up at various times in the narrative, but this one incident with the dog is never referred to again, even by the sister in her reminiscences. And the father takes that dog and runs around with it. Runs around and the dog dies.
Saras thought the meat part of her mental illness starts with this incident of the dog that bit her being killed and roasted by her father and then being given its meat to eat. That’s where the trauma started. The trauma dates back to her childhood.
As a child she hadn't understood the impact of what they had done to her. Probably this was the root cause for her turning against meat, as she may have realised growing older. Because they burned the dog, and then they cut off its tail, tied it around her leg, and then they made it run all around. And then finally, they ate it.
Is it supposed to be less cruel than killing the dog? Saras could not figure out why. How did this flashback come upon her so suddenly? Is it why she turned a vegetarian?
Then she has a dream – she keeps talking about the dream that she had. What is she remembering? She says, Dawn of the next day. The pool of blood in the barn…I first saw the face reflected there.. Saras couldn't figure out what she's talking about. But later, when this passage arrived, Saras thought Yeong-hye was talking about the dog.
Another reader thought so too. Priya mentioned anorexia nervosa – the causes for the disease could be a lot of torment during childhood. That and genetic factors could cause the eating disorder.
Pamela
The Pamela passage chose is about the painting of Yeong-hye’s naked body with flowers by her artist brother-in-law and how he describes.
‘All I did was lie there. And the floor was warm’ – that's all that it meant to her, there was no sexual arousal. And though an outside observer might have thought of it differently, she says it was just lying on the floor, and the floor was warm, and that's it.
Pamela remembers reading an interview of a male artist who painted nudes of women, and the interviewer asked, ‘Didn't you feel aroused when you were drawing?’ He said, ‘No; I’m thinking of the lines and the curves so they are perfect, and I have yet to see perfection. The day I see perfection, I will live no more.’
When artists are concentrating on their art, and focusing their creativity on achieving fullness and perfection of their art, they are not sexually aroused, but stimulated and spurred on by their art.
When the brother-in-law goes for the second session, where he photographs a male (collaborator) and Yeong-hye’s body, he is still focusing on the art. But later in his home he is tempted when he sees the ‘body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire,’ and tries to rape her – she cannot defend herself. We know the whole story after that.
She is going through this psychological problem. At the end, what her body was, and what it was supposed to represent, becomes an out-of-the-world obsession in her mind.
‘When he reached the hump of her right buttock he painted an orange flower in full bloom’
It's contradictory in a way, because here it sounds like she's lifeless, drained of all desire. But she's also talking about the tree, and the flowers coming out of the tree. She's identifying herself with the painting to such an extent that she doesn't wash off the paint even. She keeps it on for days. She says she loves the flowers.
It's only when the brother-in-law paints the other man for a joint male-female photoshoot, that she gets aroused when she sees the flowers on her partner – because of the flowers, not because of the person’s body. It's a strange way of thinking. People are exploited in such intimate situations, said Pamela.
We've seen cases of mentally unwell women being made pregnant.
Was Yeong-hye exploited in this situation or not, remains a question which the readers debated. Her sister claims so in the end. In-hye says Yeong-hye was not in a position to refuse, not being in her right mind..
In-hye's husband is also not fully there, said Pamela. He too is tackling some kind of a mental issue. So maybe he's not consciously exploiting her. He looks at it more like an artist. It starts off like that with his fascination for her Mongolian mark.
Priya wondered whether the repeated reference to the Mongolian mark has an effect on the psychological disorder. Is there a link between the two? Usually the Mongolian mark that some babies are born with disappears after the age of four or five. Is the fact that it has remained on her body even after becoming an adult an abnormal thing, asked Priya. No, was the unanimous opinion of the readers who responded – the Mongolian mark has nothing to do with the mind, it is a localised body pigmentation.
Devika
At this point in the novel we're done with all this painting and now the sister is wondering about her husband, because he seems vaguer than ever from the time she married him. Devika chose a passage in which In-hye recalls how she first met her husband when he came to her shop and wonders what caused the affection to grow.
In-Hye's future husband ‘looking utterly worn out’ when he came to her shop
In-hye starts wondering if she's made the right choice after all these years. She's got a child now. Her husband also probably changed over a period of time. She does not know at this point that her husband has flower-painted her sister
Devika also found it very difficult to read this novel. She skipped quite a bit after this passage and just about survived. She was honest in saying it was a tough book to read although short as novels go. Quite unlike Jane Eyre, our novel for July, which she has half finished. Rosetti is so nice to read.
The Vegetarian was just a little unpleasant in parts. It was extreme in some places. Or was it because it's a translation? Maybe the Korean was milder. But whether it is in English or in Korean, there's not going to be much difference in the book, a reader said, leaving aside all the controversy about the translation.
The descriptions are very gross according to Devika.
Arundhaty remarked that you have to remember in Korea, apparently, women's position is very different. One of the main takeaways from the novel is that women's status is terrible in Korea. Patriarchy there is really dominant.
Priya said it is purely a book on mental illness, not on women being downtrodden. Mental illness is the theme; Priya was oblivious of the patriarchy in Yeong-hye’s family growing up, and of the bosses at dinner. How bad is force-feeding meat to an unwilling grown-up woman? How could the father dare to do that? He felt entitled.
There was no love there. Consider her helplessness. The father definitely is a bit of a disciplinarian, said Priya. That is to condone his bullying attitude. Terrorist would be a better word. She is a victim of his out-of-control anger.
The mother-in-law comes and she feels helpless that Yeong-hye is not eating, though she is grown now.
Other readers told Priya that there was no love there at all in the intervention. It was a desire to dominate, not loving care. The father’s mental attitude was ‘How dare his daughter not do what he tells her to do?’
Priya reiterated this is a book purely about mental illness, though it may be unpalatable to a lot of people who read it. All the dreams Yeong-hye has are horrible.
Saras said it's good actually that Priya brought this up because we have to accept that there is such a thing as mental illness and we need to understand the people who go through this as patients can’t be blamed for their disease. They need help and treatment.
Normal people like her father don't know how to handle that abnormality. It would be the same if it happened in our family, that somebody had a mental health problem. Saras has people in her extended family who had mental health problems. It was quite a revelation, that not eating something could actually be on account of a psychological disorder.
Pam meant the anorexia. Your mind works only when your gut is healthy, was the profound statement of a reader. Another term which Pamela came across recently was suicidal depression. And this is one way suicidal depression manifests itself – people stop eating. Princess Diana suffered from it. She had bulimia and she had anorexia and all its complications.
At the Bulimia Cafe
Saras has a friend whose son has got bulimia and they're struggling with him, a young boy. He was very fat as a kid. He's become very thin now, but he still thinks and feels he's fat. His self-image is still that he's fat.
He eats because earlier his parents would force him to eat. Then he would go to the bathroom and throw up. Her friend didn't realise that. Then she had a doubt because the boy was still losing weight. She went and listened at the bathroom door and she could hear him throwing up. They had to put him in a place where they help people like this. He is now over 18, and signed himself out, saying he didn’t want to stay there. They're really struggling with how to cope with his illness.
Towards the end of the book, the sister also begins to cop the same illness. It is genetic also, said Priya..
How depressing it is when you come to the end of the book, you feel you are reading about the self-destruction of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play.
Zakia
Zakia’s passage continues in the same chapter a little further when In-hye is going to see her at the hospital and she looks at the zelkova tree, which is just outside the window. The tree has some significance throughout this book.
‘she turns to look at the zelkova tree that stands in the hospital’s front garden’
At the end of this chapter, Yeong-hye consoles her sister, compares themselves to the tree, and says, sister, all the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters.
Yeong-hye somehow feels that she could have stopped this from escalating, or saved her sister. She carries a guilt all the time about it, so they're still very attached to each other, and she's very caring of her; it is all about mental health we can see.
What Priya said about the helplessness of her sister In-hye is very apparent now; the family goes through hell. The sister is so helpless as she watches them, and really can't do much. She goes through her childhood trauma also, together.
KumKum
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KumKum nodded agreement because it comes out in her passage that follows on Zakia’s. Yeong-hye is already in an institution. The sister comes to see her there with some food.
She is completely gone off her rocker by this time. That dream recurs off and on. It is just the obsessional thought in her mind. She was not sleeping well either.
KumKum chose to read a passage where we learn Yeong-hye has been institutionalised after her extreme rejection of human existence; she refuses to eat even. Her sister In-hye comes to visit her with food. In-hye finds Yeong-hye standing upside down in her room. Yeong-hye believes she is turning into a tree, and even attempts to physically photosynthesise in sunlight. She is imitating trees who stand with their trunks in the ground.
Yeong-hye's body is wasting away, yet she seems at peace in her delusion of becoming a tree. Yeong-hye believes she no longer requires human food for sustenance, only water:
"I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head ....leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands.... so I dug down into the earth. On and on....I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch, so I spread my legs; I spread them wide..." These few lines show the speaker's mind has completely disintegrated..
Georgia O'Keeffe painting Jimson Weed-White Flower No.1 breathes an eroticism that reflects Yeong-hye's desire for ‘flowers to bloom from my crotch’
Though The Vegetarian is a Booker Prize winning novel, KumKum did not enjoy reading it. She felt the story was not going forward smoothly, and had too many bumps on the way. It was a bizarre story about an afflicted woman, surrounded by family members and acquaintances who were extremely judgmental. They drove her to complete madness.
The translation of the book is not good enough in KumKum’s opinion.
Priya
Priya was thrilled to have the book lying around a long time. Hemjit bought the first copy among us. And he proposed we should read it some time at KRG. He would have found it difficult too.
Priya’s passage was near the end where the two sisters when they were children get lost in the forest. They've gone somewhere and both the sisters get lost in the forest. They say let's not go back, let’s live in the forest.
The root problem was their father. He was domineering. The elder sister listens to the father, and does whatever he commands. The younger one is different and the father takes it out on her. Yeong-hye being docile had still not been able to deflect their father's anger. He takes it out on the son too, who gets beaten up for everything. The father probably drove Yeong-hye to madness and In-hye, the elder one, who seemed normal, is also being affected by the abnormality around her.
Joe said the elder sister was okay because she she got out and made good on her own, and set up a thriving shop, built a career.
Childhood trauma could be one of the things that triggers the elder sister too.
Probably now Yeong-hye just wants to transmute into those trees. She sees herself as another tree in the forest. Priya said it is about the early childhood events that can cause this trauma, about how violence on children haunts them in later life.
Devika also felt for this girl; people don't understand how terrible this kind of behaviour of fathers can be.
So much violence goes on. But look at the children in Afghanistan. Do all of them end like this? So there is genetic factor also when it comes to mental trauma, said Priya. Some children in time also become violent people because they see all this violence around them.
Childhood physical or sexual abuse or exposure to gender-based violence – affects limbic and paralimbic structures, including the amygdala and insular cortex
The disturbance caused by early childhood trauma cannot be minimised. The father in turn obviously had something happen to him as a child to make him the kind of violent person he became. He's also an alcoholic, he makes the ‘broth.’
Priya said Gopa will be able to tell us more about social workers in UK or even in US. In those countries if there’s a whiff of abnormal goings on in the home, domestic violence and so on, social workers come and inspect and the children are rescued and taken away.
Devika said the older notion was, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ So everybody got whacked at one point in time, and children accepted it and were normal, but it may have affected some of them in their later life as well.
Punishment for a justifiable cause is okay, but unreasonable whacking can be a sign of uncontrolled anger in the teacher, who being upset about something is taking it out on the innocent child.
Geetha
Geetha wondered about that cord in In-hye’s pocket – did it mean that she wants to end her own life? It was a very strong cord. The way she walks out is as if she has given up on everything, suggests that she is going to do harm to herself.
The third section of the book, Flaming Trees, is the narrative of In-hye the elder of the two sisters of the family. In-hye, even as a young girl, had been a responsible child always making peace in the house between the father and her sibling; she had a maternal affection towards her younger sister, Yeong-hye .
She set up her own beauty salon and began to earn for the family. Later we see a young man described as skinny as a sorghum stalk with seven days worth of stubble on his face entering the salon. This was her first meeting with the man whom she eventually marries, more because of a protective instinct to nourish and nurture, than to love. There was no love in the marriage. It's the same mothering instinct she fulfils. They have a son in due course, Ji-woo, who is cared for by her.
In the passage Geetha chose, In-hye has reached a point of desperation and is mentally giving up on being the caring mother, wife, and sister; at the same time the responsible, hard-working, meticulous business woman.
‘The folds of the mountain looked deeper than usual’
She takes apart the mobile made for her son and puts it away, from an involuntary habit of tidying up after Ji-woo. Then she goes for a walk early in the morning, experiencing a drowning pain. The walk seems to calm her and she feels a peace.
To Geetha she seems to be the only ‘normal’ character in the story. She is sadly surrounded by dysfunctional people, except for her young son. Trees and nature play a role in the story, with an overwhelming presence. A loveless life is indeed a sad life.
Saras said In-hye goes to the hospital and tells her sister she’s actually insane. That's the first time she's used the word.
KumKum said she loves this group; our understanding of the novel expands, as we read it together. Saras was made the point that even a book that the majority of readers did not like, or at least did not enjoy let us say – they yet found so much to discuss.
Collective reading brings out the many perspectives, said Devika. KumKum remarked that the selection of passages by each reader also elucidated what was going on within the characters. That dog event struck KumKum because Yeong-hye really didn't do well after that. It made horrendous reading.
Geetha said even that little bit that she left out, even in that she sees a dream: the raw meat in her mouth and blood. All that probably had a cumulative impact on her. Saras agreed that is so true. In the book she says, she ate so much meat, that's why the life of all the animals that she has eaten is lodged in her, the blood and flesh of all those butchered bodies.
Saras was reminded of her husband Rajendran who was a hardcore non-vegetarian, he would eat anything. Then he saw a documentary video on TV in which they showed the slaughterhouses. After that, he went cold turkey and stopped eating meat. There’s a quote in that documentary that if slaughterhouses had glass doors, everyone could go vegetarian. After that, for the longest time, he stopped eating beef, but he would have chicken and fish.
So what's the difference? – Saras asked.
KumKum said Gopa Joseph once asked her, whether she tried beef? No, KumKum hadn’t because she used to see the huge carcasses hanging in New Market, in one section all tongue (a delicacy said Geetha) which turned black or blue. And the tail (for ox-tail soup) and all the dainty bits. She could never think of eating that.
Joe reminded KumKum there was an aberration when she was pregnant with Michal, and suddenly wanted to eat a hamburger. It was one day and only once and never after that. Joe remembers, but KumKum doesn't recall it – pregnancy brings on crazy eating desires.
Joe said it's a bleak novel. At the end what are you left with? What do you want to conclude? What do you want to hope for these characters, who will live on after you have finished reading the novel? One thinks of each character and asks: what's the future for this character? What's the future for that character? Here it all looks very depressing.
Geetha said abnormality is not really what one is born with; external factors affect you and your action determines the future course. Maybe psychiatrists can treat you, said Zakia. There should be a way to treat such cases.
Nobody was treated here, said KumKum. Yes, Yeong-hye was, but she doesn't respond, said Saras. True, said KumKum, by the time she goes to the sanatorium, she's totally gone mad. She should have been taken to a doctor by her husband long before.
But her husband left her, Geetha said. The husband did not have the wherewithal to even analyse the situation, said Arundhaty.
Saras spoke again of this friend of hers and her husband; they don't know what to do with their child. They are educated, sympathetic, and have the money. They are in the States where this kind of treatment is available; if they were in India, it would have been much worse. But with all the facilities in the US they are just not able to master the affliction. They don't know what to do. They are just living through it now, and saying whatever happens, happens. Their son eats and then he throws up, he eats only certain things, certain things that are shaped in a particular way. And he's such an intelligent boy. They are in Wisconsin.
KumKum said she looks forward to KRG sessions, they are the high point of the month.
Saras just wants to read the novel once again quickly with everybody's input. KumKum will go through all of the passages the readers chose.
Joe said when he doesn't particularly like a novel or when he feels that he should get through it as fast as possible, he tries to do a skip reading. This novel defied his ability to skip and read because the sequence of events was not smooth, the prose was rat-tat-tat – jerky and bumpy. He had to read it slowly.
Saras agreed, because if you leave something, you miss something important that has happened in this novel. Saras said we should say something about the translation also because it's such a controversial thing.
Joe said wait for the DREs for there is a question about the translation.
When Saras was reading the novel Yeong-hye’s husband tells her to make eggs, such a typically British thing. She says ‘it’s not as if you’ll die if you go without meat just for one meal.’ He replies ‘Oh good, so that’s me sorted then.’ (bottom of page 13) That's such typical British phraseology that it sounds odd in this context.
And there’s a bit about stupefied trees, with adjectives for describing a tree in the hospital garden:
“…she turns to look at the zelkova tree that stands in the hospital’s front garden. The tree is clearly very old, easily four hundred years. On bright days it would spread its countless branches and let the sunlight scintillate its leaves, seemingly communicating something to her. Today, a day sodden and stupefied with rain, it is reticent, and keeps its thoughts unspoken. The old bark on its lower part is dark as a drenched evening, and the leaves tremble silently on the twigs as the raindrops batter down on them.”
Readings
Thomo Yeong-hye declares to her husband she won’t eat meat any more; but she was once a competent meat cook
Ch 1 Pg 13-15
“Just make me some fried eggs. I’m really tired today. I didn’t even get to have a proper lunch.” “I threw the eggs out as well.”
“What?”
“And I’ve given up milk too.”
“This is unbelievable. You’re telling me not to eat meat?”
“I couldn’t let those things stay in the fridge. It wouldn’t be right.”
How on earth could she be so self-centered? I stared at her lowered eyes, her expression of cool self-possession. The very idea that there should be this other side to her, one where she selfishly did as she pleased, was astonishing. Who would have thought she could be so unreasonable? “So you’re saying that from now on, there’ll be no meat in this house?”
“Well, after all, you usually only eat breakfast at home. And I suppose you often have meat with your lunch and dinner, so…it’s not as if you’ll die if you go without meat just for one meal.” Her reply was so methodical, it was as if she thought that this ridiculous decision of hers was something completely rational and appropriate.
“Oh good, so that’s me sorted then. And what about you? You’re claiming that you’re not going to eat meat at all from now on?” She nodded. “Oh, really? Until when?”
“I suppose…forever.”
I was lost for words, though at the same time I was aware that choosing a vegetarian diet wasn’t quite so rare as it had been in the past. People turn vegetarian for all sorts of reasons: to try and alter their genetic predisposition toward certain allergies, for example, or else because it’s seen as more environmentally friendly not to eat meat. Of course, Buddhist priests who have taken certain vows are morally obliged not to participate in the destruction of life, but surely not even impressionable young girls take it quite that far. As far as I was concerned, the only reasonable grounds for altering one’s eating habits were the desire to lose weight, an attempt to alleviate certain physical ailments, being possessed by an evil spirit, or having your sleep disturbed by indigestion. In any other case, it was nothing but sheer obstinacy for a wife to go against her husband’s wishes as mine had done.
If you’d said that my wife had always been faintly nauseated by meat, then I could have understood it, but in reality it was quite the opposite—ever since we’d got married she had proved herself a more than competent cook, and I’d always been impressed by her way with food. Tongs in one hand and a large pair of scissors in the other, she’d flipped rib meat in a sizzling pan while snipping it into bite-sized pieces, her movements deft and practiced. Her fragrant, caramelized deep-fried belly pork was achieved by marinating the meat in minced ginger and glutinous starch syrup. Her signature dish had been wafer-thin slices of beef seasoned with black pepper and sesame oil, then coated with sticky rice powder as generously as you would with rice cakes or pancakes, and dipped in bubbling shabu-shabu broth. She’d made bibimbap with bean sprouts, minced beef, and pre-soaked rice stirfried in sesame oil. There had also been a thick chicken and duck soup with large chunks of potato, and a spicy broth packed full of tender clams and mussels, of which I could happily polish off three helpings in a single sitting.
What I was presented with now was a sorry excuse for a meal. (577 words)
Arundhaty Company meal at the restaurant with bosses
Chapter 1 - Pg 22-24
“Did you have any problems finding the place?” my boss’s wife asked me. “No, no, I’ve been past here once or twice before. In fact, I’d been thinking of coming here myself.”
“Ah, I see…yes, the garden has turned out quite well, hasn’t it? You ought to try coming in the daytime; you can see the flower beds through that window over there.” But by the time the food began to be served, the strain of maintaining a casual facade, which I had just about managed so far, was bringing me close to breaking point. The first thing placed in front of us was an exquisite dish of mung-bean jelly, dressed with thin slivers of green-pea jelly, mushrooms and beef. Up until then my wife had merely sat and observed the scene in silence, but just as the waiter was on the point of ladling some onto her plate, she finally opened her mouth.
“I won’t eat it.”
She’d spoken very quietly, but the other guests all instantly stopped what they were doing, directing glances of surprise and wonder at her emaciated body.
“I don’t eat meat,” she said, slightly louder this time.
“My word, so you’re one of those ‘vegetarians, are you?” my boss asked.
“Well, I knew that some people in other countries are strict vegetarians, of course. And even here, you know, it does seem that attitudes are beginning to change a little. Now and then there’ll be someone claiming that eating meat is bad…after all, I suppose giving up meat in order to live a long life isn’t all that unreasonable, is it?”
“But surely it isn’t possible to live without eating meat?” his wife asked with a smile. The waiter whisked nine plates away, leaving my wife’s still-gleaming plate on the table. The conversation naturally continued on the topic of vegetarianism.
“Do you remember those mummified human remains they discovered recently? Five hundred thousand years old, apparently, and even back then humans were hunting for meat—they could tell that from the skeletons. Meat eating is a fundamental human instinct, which means vegetarianism goes against human nature, right? It just isn’t natural.”
“People mainly used to turn vegetarian because they subscribed to a certain ideology…I’ve been to various doctors myself, to have some tests done and see if there was anything in particular I ought to be avoiding, but everywhere I went I was told something different…in any case, the idea of a special diet always made me feel uncomfortable. It seems to me that one shouldn’t be too narrow-minded when it comes to food.”
“People who arbitrarily cut out this or that food, even though they’re not actually allergic to anything—that’s what I would call narrow-minded,” the executive director’s wife chimed in; she had been sneaking sideways glances at my wife’s breasts for some time now.
“A balanced diet goes hand in hand with a balanced mind, don’t you think?” And now she loosed her arrow directly at my wife.
“Was there some special reason for your becoming a vegetarian? Health reasons, for example…or religious, perhaps?”
“No. ”
Her cool reply proved that she was completely oblivious to how delicate the situation had become. All of a sudden, a shiver ran through me—because I had a gut feeling that I knew what she was about to say next.
“I had a dream.” (558 words)
Joe Yeong-hye is forced fed meat by the family
Ch 1 – pp 38 - 41
“Father, I don’t eat meat.”
In an instant, his flat palm cleaved the empty space. My wife cupped her cheek in her hand.
“Father!” In-hye cried out, grabbing his arm. His lips twitched as though his agitation had not yet passed off. I’d known of his incredibly violent temperament for some time, but it was the first time I’d directly witnessed him striking someone.
“Mr. Cheong, Yeong-ho, the two of you come here.” I approached my wife hesitantly. He’d hit her so hard that the blood showed through the skin of her cheek. Her breathing was ragged, and it seemed that her composure had finally been shattered.
“Take hold of Yeong-hye’s arms, both of you.”
“What?”
“If she eats it once, she’ll eat it again. It’s preposterous, everyone eats meat!”
Yeong-ho stood up, looking as though he were finding this whole episode distasteful.
“Sister, would you please just eat? Or after all, it would be simple enough just to pretend. Do you have to make such a thing about it in front of Father?”
“What kind of talk is that?” my father-in-law yelled.
“Grab her arms, quickly. You too, Mr. Cheong.”
“Father, why are you doing this?” In-hye took hold of her father’s right arm.
Having thrown down the chopsticks, he now picked up a piece of pork with his fingers and approached my wife. She was hesitantly backing away when her brother seized her and sat her down. “Sister, just behave, okay? Just eat what he gives you.”
“Father, I beg you, stop this,” In-hye entreated him, but he shook her off and thrust the pork at my wife’s lips. A moaning sound came from her tightly closed mouth. She was unable to say even a single word in case, when she opened her mouth to speak, the meat found its way in.
“Father!” Yeong-ho shouted, apparently wanting to dissuade him, though he himself didn’t release his grip on my wife.
“Mm-mm….mm!”
My father-in-law mashed the pork to a pulp on my wife’s lips as she struggled in agony. Though he parted her lips with his strong fingers, he could do nothing about her clenched teeth. Eventually he flew into a passion again, and struck her in the face once more.
“Father!” Though In-hye sprang at him and held him by the waist, in the instant that the force of the slap had knocked my wife’s mouth open he’d managed to jam the pork in. As soon as the strength in Yeong- ho’s arms was visibly exhausted, my wife growled and spat out the meat. An animal cry of distress burst from her lips.
“Get away!” At first, she drew up her shoulders and seemed about to flee in the direction of the front door, but then she turned back and picked up the fruit knife that had been lying on the dining table.
“Yeong-hye?” My mother-in-law’s voice, which seemed about to break, drew a trembling line through the brutal silence. The children burst into noisy sobbing, unable to suppress it any longer. Jaw clenched, her intent stare facing each one of us down in turn, my wife brandished the knife.
“Stop her…”
“Stay back!”
Blood ribboned out of her wrist. The shock of red splashed over white china. As her knees buckled and she crumpled to the floor, the knife was wrested from her by In-hye’s husband, who until then had sat through the whole thing as an idle spectator.(573 words)
Saras Yeong-hye dreams about the time her father scorched a dog that dared to bite her; she has visions of blood and flesh, and butchered bodies
Pg 41-42
…the dog that sank its teeth into my leg is chained up to Father’s motorcycle. With its singed tail bandaged to my calf wound, a traditional remedy Mother insisted on, I go out and stand at the main gate. I am nine years old, and the summer heat is stifling. The sun has gone down, and still the sweat is running off me. The dog, too, is panting, its red tongue lolling. A white, handsome-looking dog, bigger even than me. Up until it bit the big man’s daughter, everyone in the village always thought it could do no wrong.
While Father ties the dog to the tree and scorches it with a lamp, he says it isn’t to be flogged. He says he heard somewhere that driving a dog to keep running until the point of death is considered a milder punishment. The motorcycle engine starts, and Father begins to drive in a circle. The dog runs along behind. Two laps, three laps, they circle around. Without moving a muscle I stand just inside the gate watching Whitey, eyes rolling and gasping for breath, gradually exhaust himself. Every time his gleaming eyes meet my own I glare even more fiercely.
Bad dog, you’d bite me?
Once it has gone five laps, the dog is frothing at the mouth. Blood drips from its throat, which is being choked with the rope. Constantly groaning through its damaged throat, the dog is dragged along the ground. At six laps, the dog vomits blackish-red blood, trickling from its mouth and open throat. As blood and froth mix together, I stand stiffly upright and stare at those two glittering eyes. Seven laps, and while waiting for the dog to come into view, Father looks behind and sees that it is in fact dangling limply from the motorcycle. I look at the dog’s four juddering legs, its raised eyelids, the blood and water in its dead eyes.
That evening there was a feast at our house. All the middle-aged men from the market alleyways came, everyone my father considered worth knowing. The saying goes that for a wound caused by a dog bite to heal you have to eat that same dog, and I did scoop up a mouthful for myself. No, in fact I ate an entire bowlful with rice. The smell of burnt flesh, which the perilla seeds couldn’t wholly mask, pricked my nose. I remember the two eyes that had watched me, while the dog was made to run on, while he vomited blood mixed with froth, and how later they had seemed to appear, flickering, on the surface of the soup. But I don’t care. I really didn’t care.
p.49 I don’t know why that woman is crying. I don’t know why she keeps staring at my face, either, as though she wants to swallow it. Or why she strokes the bandage on my wrist with her trembling hands.
My wrist is okay. It doesn’t bother me. The thing that hurts is my chest. Something is stuck in my solar plexus. I don’t know what it might be. It’s lodged there permanently these days. Even though
I’ve stopped wearing a bra, I can feel this lump all the time. No matter how deeply I inhale, it doesn’t go away. Yells and howls, threaded together layer upon layer, are enmeshed to form that lump. Because of meat. I ate too much meat. The lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there. Blood and flesh, all those butchered bodies are scattered in every nook and cranny, and though the physical remnants were excreted, their lives still stick stubbornly to my insides.
One time, just one more time, I want to shout. I want to throw myself through the pitch-black window. Maybe that would finally get this lump out of my body. Yes, perhaps that might work. Nobody can help me. Nobody can save me. Nobody can make me breathe.
Pamela Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law paints her naked body with flowers
Pages 84 to 86
First he swept up the hair that was falling over her shoulders, and then, starting from the nape of her neck, he began to paint. Half-open buds, red and orange, bloomed splendidly on her shoulders and back, and slender stems twined down her side. When he reached the hump of her right buttock he painted an orange flower in full bloom, with a thick, vivid yellow pistil protruding from its center. He left the left buttock, the one with the Mongolian mark, undecorated. Instead, he just used a large brush to cover the area around the bluish mark with a wash of light green, fainter than the mark itself, so that the latter stood out like the pale shadow of a flower.
Every time the brush swept over her skin he felt her flesh quiver delicately as if being tickled, and he shuddered. But it wasn’t arousal; rather, it was a feeling that stimulated something deep in his very core, passing through him like a continuous electric shock.
By the time he eventually completed the leaves and long stems, which continued over her right thigh all the way down to her slender ankle, he was completely drenched with sweat.
“All done,” he said. “Just stay like that for a minute more.”
He took the camera off the tripod and began to film her close up. He zoomed in on the details of each flower, and made a long collage of the curve of her neck, her disheveled hair, her two hands resting on the sheet, seeming tense, and the buttock with the Mongolian mark. Once he’d finally captured her whole body on the tape, he switched off the camcorder.
“You can get up now.”
Fairly worn out, he sat down on the sofa in front of the brick stove. She rested her elbows on the floor, raising herself up slowly as though her limbs were stiff and aching.
“Aren’t you cold?” He wiped away his sweat, stood up and spread his sweater over her shoulders. “It wasn’t difficult for you?”
This time she looked at him and laughed. Her laughter was faint but lively, seeming to reject nothing and be surprised by nothing.
Only then did he realize what it was that had shocked him when he’d first seen her lying prone on the sheet. This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated. But this was nothing so crass as carnal desire, not for her—rather, or so it seemed, what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented. The sunlight that came splintering through the wide window, dissolving into grains of sand, and the beauty of that body that, though this was not visible to the eye, was also ceaselessly splintering…the overwhelming inexpressibility of the scene beat against him like a wave breaking on the rocks, alleviating even those terrifyingly unknowable compulsions that had caused him such pain over the past year.
She put on her jeans and his sweater, and wrapped her hands around a mug from which the steam was rising. She left her slippers by the door, stepping lightly across the floor in her bare feet. “It wasn’t cold?” he asked for the second time, and she shook her head. “And it wasn’t difficult?” “All I did was lie there. And the floor was warm.” (570 words)
Devika In-hye recalls how she met her husband when he came to her shop, and wonders what caused the affection to grow
Chapter 3 Flaming Trees Page - 131 - 132
Had she ever really understood her husband’s true nature, bound up as it was with that seemingly impenetrable silence? She’d thought, at one time, that it might be revealed in his work, in his video art. In fact, before she met him, she hadn’t even been aware that such a field of art existed. Despite her best efforts, though, his works proved incomprehensible to her. Nothing was revealed.
She remembers the late afternoon when they first met. He’d come into her shop, skinny as a sorghum stalk and with several days’ worth of stubble on his face, a camcorder bag slung over one shoulder that was clearly weighing him down. He searched out some shaving lotion, brought it to the counter and rested both arms on the glass, looking utterly worn out. He looked like he might collapse, and take the counter with him. It was faintly miraculous the way she, having had practically no romantic experiences up until then, came out with a friendly “Have you had lunch?” As if surprised, but lacking the energy required to express that surprise, he had merely fixed her face with his exhausted gaze. Something in his defenseless state had drawn her to him.
What she’d wanted, from that afternoon, had been to use her own strength to allow him to rest. But despite devoting herself wholeheartedly to this goal, even after they were married he still looked perpetually worn out. He was always busy with his own things, and during what little time he did spend at home he looked more like a traveler putting up there for a night than a man in his own home. His silence had the heavy mass of rock and the tenacious resistance of rubber, particularly when his art wasn’t going well.
It wasn’t long before she realized something: perhaps the one she’d so earnestly wanted to help was not him but herself. Was it not perhaps her own image—she who had left home at nineteen and gone on to make a life for herself in Seoul, always entirely under her own steam—that she had seen mirrored in this man’s exhaustion?
Just as she could not be certain of the source of her affection for him, or if he was really its true object, she had never been entirely sure of his feelings for her. He often seemed to rely on her, being the type for whom daily life was a constant struggle, full of potential pitfalls. He was honest to the point of seeming naive; exaggeration or flattery was entirely beyond him. But to her he was always kind, never once raised his voice in anger, and indeed would sometimes give her a look of great respect.
“I don’t deserve you,” he used to say, before they were married. “Your goodness, your stability, how calm you always are—the way you just get on with things, and make it look so easy...”
Respect—that was what she’d taken his words to connote, but might they not in fact have been intended as a confession, that whatever it was he felt for her, it was nothing even remotely resembling love?
Zakia Yeong-hye’s odd behavior continues in the hospital
ch 3 pg 134 to 136.
In the rain, the hospital buildings stand dreary and forlorn. Their gray concrete walls appear darker and more solid than usual. The wards on the first and third floors have iron bars over the windows. Many of the patients liked to stick their faces between the bars; on bright days it was difficult to make them out, but with the weather like this several gray faces could be seen staring out at the rain. She glances up briefly, to the windows of Yeong-hye’s third-floor ward annex, then walks inside and heads toward reception. “I’ve got an appointment to see Dr. Park In-ho.”
The receptionist greets her, recognizing her from previous visits. She closes her dripping umbrella and secures the tie around it, then sits down on a long wooden bench. While she waits for the doctor to come down from the consultation room, she turns to look at the zelkova tree that stands in the hospital’s front garden. The tree is clearly very old, easily four hundred years. On bright days it would spread its countless branches and let the sunlight scintillate its leaves, seemingly communicating something to her. Today, a day sodden and stupefied with rain, it is reticent, and keeps its thoughts unspoken. The old bark on its lower part is dark as a drenched evening, and the leaves tremble silently on the twigs as the raindrops batter down on them. And she sees her sister’s face, flickering like a ghostly afterimage overlaid on the silent scene.
She closes her bloodshot eyes for a long time before opening them again. The tree fills her field of vision, still silent, keeping its own counsel. Still she cannot sleep. It’s been three months straight now, three months of getting by snatching pockets of sleep here and there, never more than an hour at any one time. Yeong-hye’s voice, the forest with the black rain falling, and her own face with the blood trickling from her eye, shiver the long night into fragments like potsherds.
Usually, when she has given up on trying to wring any more sleep out of the night, it is around three in the morning. She washes her face, brushes her teeth, prepares some side dishes, cleans and tidies every corner of the house, and still the clock goes as slow as ever, the shifting of the hands like the almost comically suspended movements of some ponderous dance. In the end she goes into his room and listens to some of the records he left behind, or puts her hand on her back and spins herself around the room as he once had, or curls up in the bathtub with her clothes on and even feels, for the first time, as though he mightn’t have been so incomprehensible after all. He probably just hadn’t had the energy to take his clothes off, simple as that. He simply can’t have had the energy to adjust the water temperature and take a shower. It struck her that this narrow, concave space was, oddly enough, cozier than anywhere else in the entire apartment.
“When did all of this begin?” she sometimes asked herself in such moments.
“No—when did it all begin to fall apart?”
Yeong-hye’s increasingly odd behavior had become noticeable around three years ago, when she’d suddenly decided to turn vegetarian. She lost so much weight it was quite shocking to look at her, and she practically stopped sleeping altogether. Yes, she’d always been quiet, but at that time she would say so little that any kind of meaningful communication was impossible. The whole family had been extremely concerned, their parents in particular. All this had happened shortly after In-hye and her husband had moved with Ji-woo to a new apartment. At the housewarming, when the whole family had got together, their father had struck Yeong-hye in the face, held her mouth open and forced a lump of meat inside. In-hye’s body had jerked violently, as though she herself were the one receiving the blow. She’d stood and watched, stiff as a ramrod, while Yeong-hye howled like an animal and spat out the meat, then picked up the fruit knife and slit her own wrist. (696 words)
KumKum In-hye finds her sister doing a long handstand in the hospital; Yeong-hye says she doesn’t need to eat anymore
Chapter 3 Flaming Trees. Page 147 till 148
Left alone with Yeong-hye, In-hye squatted down and tried to look her sister in the eye. Anyone’s face will look different when they’re upside down. Yeong-hye’s face certainly looked odd, with what little flesh she had on her cheeks pushed down toward her eyes. Those eyes were glittering and sharp as Yeong-hye stared into space. She seemed unaware of her sister’s presence.
“Yeong-hye.” No reply. “Yeong-hye. What are you doing? Stand up.”
She reached out a hand to Yeong-hye’s flushed cheek.
“Stand up, Yeong-hye. Doesn’t your head hurt? For goodness’ sake, your face is bright red. ”With nothing else for it, she gave her sister a gentle push. Just as the nurse had said, Yeong-hye immediately tumbled to the floor, and In-hye quickly lifted her head up, supporting her neck as you would with a baby.
“Sister.” Yeong-hye’s face was wreathed in smiles, her eyes shining as though she’d just woken up from a happy dream.
“When did you get here?”
The nurse, who’d been watching the two of them, came up and led them to the meeting room that adjoined the lobby. This, she explained, was where family members could meet with the patients whose symptoms were so severe that it was difficult for them to go down to the visiting room in reception. In-hye guessed that it was also where consultations with the doctor took place.
When In-hye laid the food she’d brought out on the table, Yeong-hye said,
“Sister. You don’t have to bring that stuff now.” She smiled.“I don’t need to eat anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” In-hye stared at her sister as though she were possessed. It was a long time since she’d seen Yeong-hye’s face shining like this; no, in fact, it was the first time.
“What on earth were you doing just now?” she asked.
Yeong-hye met her question with another.
“Sister, did you know?”
“Know what?”
“I didn’t, you see. I thought trees stood up straight…I only found out just now. They actually stand with both arms in the earth, all of them. Look, look over there, aren’t you surprised?” Yeong-hye sprang up and pointed to the window. “All of them, they’re all standing on their heads.”
Yeong-hye laughed frantically. In-hye remembered moments from their childhood when Yeong-hye’s face had worn the same expression as it did now. Those moments when her sister’s single-lidded eyes would narrow and turn completely dark, when that innocent laughter would come rushing out of her mouth. “Do you know how I found out? Well, I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head…leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands…so I dug down into the earth. On and on…I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch, so I spread my legs; I spread them wide…”
Bewildered, In-hye looked across at Yeong-hye’s feverish eyes.
“I need to water my body. I don’t need this kind of food, sister. I need water.” (498 words)
Priya In-hye ponders how her sister being docile had been unable to deflect their father’s anger
pages 157 & 158
Why, is it such a bad thing to die?
A long time ago, she and Yeong-hye had got lost on a mountain. Yeong-hye, who had been nine at
the time, said,
“Let’s just not go back.”
At the time, In-hye hadn’t understood what she meant.
“What are you talking about? It’ll get dark any minute now. We have to hurry up and find the path.”
Only after all this time was she able to understand why Yeong-hye had said what she did. Yeong-hye had been the only victim of their father’s beatings. Such violence wouldn’t have bothered their brother Yeong-ho so much, a boy who went around doling out his own rough justice to the village children. As the eldest daughter, In-hye had been the one who took over from their exhausted mother and made a broth for her father to wash the liquor down, and so he’d always taken a certain care in his dealings with her. Only Yeong-hye, docile and naive, had been unable to deflect their father’s temper or put up any form of resistance. Instead, she had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, In-hye could see that the role that she had adopted back then of the hard-working, self-sacrificing eldest daughter had been a sign not of maturity but of cowardice. It had been a survival tactic.
Could I have prevented it? Could I have prevented those unimaginable things from sinking so deep inside of Yeong-hye and holding her in their grip? She saw her sister again, as a child, her back and shoulders and the back of her head as she stood alone in front of the main gate at sunset. The two of them had eventually made it down off the mountain, but on the opposite side from where they’d started. They’d hitched a ride on a power tiller back to their small town, hurrying along the unfamiliar road as darkness fell. In-hye had been relieved, but not her sister. Yeong-hye had said nothing, only stood and watched the flaming poplars kindled by the evening light. (356 words)
Geetha The sister can take it no more and exits from the house and goes to the mountain
Chapter 3 Flaming Trees Page 165-166
She sat down on the sofa. Her eyes followed the second hand on the clock as it ticked around, and she made another effort to regulate her breathing. To her surprise, there was still no improvement. A feeling of déjà vu crept up on her then, a feeling of having already experienced this same moment countless times. The proof of her internal pain had been set in front of her as though this were something she’d spent a long time preparing for, as though she’d been waiting for just this moment. All of this is meaningless.
I can’t take it anymore.
I can’t go on any longer.
I don’t want to.
She took one more look around at the various objects inside the house. They did not belong to her. Just like her life had never belonged to her.
Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned.
She got up, shivering, and went over to the room where the toys had been left scattered. Every evening for the past week, she would take down the mobile which Ji-woo had helped her to decorate, and begin to untie the thick cord. It was wound so tightly that it hurt the tips of her fingers, but she continued patiently until the final knot was untied. She rolled up the colored paper and cellophane, which had been decorated with stars, and tidied it away in a basket, then rolled up the cord and put it in her trouser pocket.
She slipped on a pair of sandals, pushed open the heavy front door and went out. She walked down the five flights of stairs. It was still dark outside. The huge apartment building was illuminated only by the light she herself had left on. She carried on walking, through the gate at the rear of the apartment complex and up the dark, narrow path to the mountain.
The folds of the mountain looked deeper than usual in the blue-black darkness. It was so early that even the old-timers who diligently went out to collect mineral water at dawn were still asleep in their beds. She walked on, head bowed. There was something on her face, sweat or tears, she wasn’t sure, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. The pain feels like a hole swallowing her up, a source of intense fear and yet, at the same time, a strange, quiet peace. (437 words)
What a beautiful Blog Post on the book I did not enjoy reading. Thank you Saras, Geetha and Joe for your research, and endeavor to put together the piece on the blog.
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