The Vegetarian

“I had a dream—she’d said that twice now. Beyond the window, in the dark tunnel, her face flitted by—her face, but unfamiliar, as though I were seeing it for the first time.”

Yeong-hye’s frequent dreaming imbues her with a constant fear of meat and blood. The deeper she goes in her efforts to stop the dreams from coming, the more “unfamiliar” she appears to those around her. Later in the novel, it becomes clear that Yeong-hye’s strangeness is connected to her childhood trauma.

“But the fear. My clothes still wet with blood. Hide, hide behind the trees. Crouch down, don’t let anybody see. My bloody hands. My bloody mouth. In the barn, what had I done?”

In one of Yeong-hye’s first narrations of her nightmares, she emphasizes the presence of blood. As she continues to avoid meat as a result, she eventually seems to be trying to empty herself of any animal characteristics. The closer she can be to becoming a tree, the farther she is from the terror she feels in these dreams.

“I suppose … forever.”

Yeong-hye’s petulant, almost childlike response to her husband’s query about how long she will be a vegetarian at first seems like it is meant to be funny. Yet as the novel continues and Yeong-hye refuses to eat meat, it becomes clear that the intention to be vegetarian “forever” is sincere. Yeong-hye’s determination is introduced early on, and even though the people around her doubt her, she holds fast.

“All because of this agonizing dream, from which I was shut out, had no way of knowing and moreover didn’t want to know, she continued to waste away.”

None of the male characters in the novel can understand Yeong-hye’s choices or feelings. Mr. Cheong is typical of the men in the novel as he expresses not wanting to know what is in Yeong-hye’s dream, even though she is “wast[ing] away.” The men in Kang’s text are only concerned with women’s issues when it impacts the men’s lives.

“Perhaps I’m only now coming face-to-face with the thing that has always been here.”

As Yeong-hye’s dreams intensify, she begins understanding more clearly what her purpose is. It is possible that the “thing that has always been here” is the violence of her childhood, which embedded itself deep inside and only is coming out now that the dreams started. The quiet of the “thing” inside of her means that she is the only one who can understand what it is and figure out how to fix it. 

“Why are my edges all sharpening—what am I going to gouge?”

Yeong-hye marvels at the ways her body is changing now that she is vegetarian. She will eventually be so thin that individual vertebrae stick out from her back. Yeong-hye’s transformation into something that could “gouge,” that is, that could do violence, is somehow protective. Even though she expresses concern in this moment, she feels a sense of relief overall as she becomes more treelike and less human.

“In an instant, his flat palm cleaved the empty space. My wife cupped her cheek in her hand.”

As her entire family watches, Yeong-hye’s father slaps her across the face. No one moves to stop him, demonstrating his complete patriarchal control over the social world around him. Yeong-hye only reacts after he forces her to eat meat, cutting her own wrist; committing violence against herself is the only way she can finally escape her father.

“The thing he’d been searching for was something quieter, deeper, more private.”

The brother-in-law struggles to create good artwork, and when he goes to a performance that features people painted with flowers, he believes that it is too showy. He expresses his desire for something more “private,” which he eventually will find by having sex with his sister-in-law on camera. His search for intimacy ends up leading him to break society’s rules, unlike more popular art which, he believes, doesn’t get at real meaning. 

“In his mind, the fact that his sister-in-law still had a Mongolian mark on her buttocks became inexplicably bound up with the image of men and women having sex, their naked bodies completely covered with painted flowers.”

As the brother-in-law becomes more obsessed with his sister-in-law, he focuses on her Mongolian mark, a birthmark that usually fades but never left her body. Her mark might represent the ways that her childhood trauma remains a part of her and somehow also becomes wrapped up in sexual desire. 

“Was he a normal human being? More than that, a moral human being? A strong human being, able to control his own impulses?”

The brother-in-law’s questioning of his “own impulses” triggers a larger conflict of whether he is “normal” or “moral.” Kang’s separation of these two ideas suggests that the novel is attempting to explore the difference between what is normal and what is moral, which is later explored more in In-hye’s questioning of whether she should have committed Yeong-hye to the hospital.

“And the fact that the blood that had gushed out of her artery had soaked his white shirt, drying into the dark, matte burgundy of red bean soup, felt like a shocking, indecipherable premonition of his own eventual fate.”

Yeong-hye’s blood ends up on the brother-in-law’s shirt after she cuts her wrist. Later, she will also vomit blood. In a strange parallel, In-hye also experiences a lengthy period of vaginal bleeding and is terrified by it. The brother-in-law suggests that the contact with Yeong-hye’s blood is somehow a “premonition” of what is to come; each time a woman bleeds in the novel, it causes either the woman or another character to question life and death.

“When it was all over, she was crying. He couldn’t tell what those tears meant—pain, pleasure, passion, disgust, or some inscrutable loneliness that she would have been no more able to explain than he would have been to understand.”

After the brother-in-law has nonconsensual sex with In-hye, he wonders about her “tears” and thinks maybe they are due to an “inscrutable loneliness.” Yet despite being aware that he has hurt her in some way, the brother-in-law cannot bring himself to do anything to amend the situation—in fact, he separates himself further from his family after this incident. 

“Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, and thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time.”

The brother-in-law wonders about Yeong-hye’s composure when he paints her naked body. This is one of the most revelatory statements regarding what has been happening to Yeong-hye, where the brother-in-law seems able to capture her intense internal conflict. Although In-hye later grasps at a similar idea, it is only through jealousy, rather than admiration.

“A thrilling energy seemed to flow out quietly from some unknowable place inside his body and collect on the tip of his brush.”

The brother-in-law’s painting is tied up in his sexual desire for Yeong-hye. In this quote, the brush serves as a phallic symbol for the “energy” that he will eventually literally exert during sex with Yeong-hye.

“It wasn’t him, it was the flowers.”

After rejecting the brother-in-law’s advances in the studio, Yeong-hye explains that her sexual interest in J was only due to the “flowers” painted on his body. She is only comfortable being physically close with another person when they are more plant than animal. 

“He had to rush out onto the veranda, now, and throw himself over the railing against which she was leaning. He would fall down three floors and smash his head to pieces. It was the only way.”

Immediately before the ambulance arrives and takes him away, the brother-in-law concludes that he must kill himself. It is unclear whether the impetus for his suicidal ideation is that he can’t be with Yeong-hye or that he has been with her.

“There is something battened down about the woods in this torrential rain, like a huge animal suppressing a roar.”

In this simile, In-hye compares the woods to a “huge animal.” The conflation of trees and animals continues the tension that has been explored throughout the novel. The trees hold steady in the rain and seem to suppress “a roar,” just as Yeong-hye, in her attempt to become like a tree, is suppressing her own memories and fears. 

“Look, sister, I’m doing a handstand, leaves are growing out of my body, roots are sprouting out of my hands.”

Yeong-hye appears in a dream to In-hye and says these words before she actually says them in real life. Yeong-hye wants to become like a tree with flowers blooming out between her legs; she believes this would ultimately resolve her conflicts. 

“Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness as it whisked her life downstream, a life she had to constantly strain to keep from breaking apart.”

In-hye reflects on her efforts to control her life, which is always on the verge of “breaking apart” despite her dedication. Where time has made visible Yeong-hye’s choices and experiences, time only impacts In-hye invisibly, so that her suffering is silent and isolating. Even when she begins thinking about killing herself, it is by herself, and she never reveals her thoughts to anyone.

“‘I’m not an animal anymore, sister […] I don’t need to eat, not now.’”

Yeong-hye finally believes that she has achieved her goal of becoming a tree, so that she only requires sunlight and water. By removing her animalistic qualities, Yeong-hye can shed the trauma she has experienced in her physical body.

“Why, is it such a bad thing to die?”

This question, shared between the two sisters, illustrates a greater intention of the novel. Most of the characters, from In-hye to Yeong-hye to the brother-in-law, express a desire to die at some point. In-hye isn’t sure if the question is a good one, and has difficulty embracing the idea that it isn’t a bad thing to die, but eventually seems to come to a different conclusion about death.

“But she felt as though there were still an open wound inside her body. Somehow, it seemed this wound had in fact grown bigger than her, that her own body was being pulled into its pitch-black maw.”

In-hye has difficulty after having a polyp removed from her vaginal wall; she feels as if her wound is “bigger than her.” She has constantly tried to control her circumstances and physical needs, pushing through whenever possible. With this new internal wound, she struggles to figure out how to heal. 

“Even when she turned about on the spot and searched in all directions, In-hye hadn’t been able to find a tree that would take her life from her.”

In one of the only dreams that In-hye narrates, she finds herself surrounded by trees that show her no mercy. The contrast between Yeong-hye’s transformation into a treelike being and In-hye’s rejection in this dream heightens the comparison between the two sisters. Yeong-hye’s ability to separate from her humanity allows the forest and natural world to accept her; this dream shows the clear juxtaposition of how In-hye’s responsibility tethers her to other people, especially her son.