Paris, November 4, 2020
The Vegetarian is a triptych, the narration is done in turn by three characters’ points of view: Yeong-hye’s husband, Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, and Yeong-hye’s sister.
- Yeong-hye’s husband. He defines himself while he is describing his wife. He is an uninspired and banal man who defines himself through his wife, viewing her as a mere extension of his life. For him, her decision to stop eating meat is as trivial as any household chore, and her reading obsession is considered on the same level as any other obsession, like for example, domestic occupations.
- Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, a video artist whose work lacked depth until he began a project with Yeong-hye, awakening something within him. His attraction to her becomes central to his artistic—and personal—transformation. Before this work, his art had nothing special or remarkable.
- Yeong-hye’s sister, who is present in her last moments, embodies the obedient, nurturing woman of a traditional patriarchal society. She conforms to the cultural expectations placed upon her, while observing her sister’s breakdown with a mixture of pity and distance.
Reading has brought Yeong-hye to a higher level of knowledge and consciousness about her world and society, in comparison to her family. She constantly tells them: “You don’t understand!” She is aware of it, which is why she always says: “You don’t understand!”
Yeong-hye, by herself, is present only by some short intervention in italics! Her inner transformation, triggered by her dreams and vegetarianism, is beyond their grasp. Her personage is described by the reaction of others toward her behavior.
Yeong-hye’s decision not to eat meat is received as an appalling rebuke by her entire family, especially her father, a Vietnam War veteran* whose violent tendencies, likely exacerbated by PTSD, traumatize all the family, including Yeong-hye. During a family meal, orchestrated as an intervention of sorts, he attempts to shove a piece of sweet-and-sour pork down his daughter’s throat. In response, Yeong-hye slits her wrist as the entire family watches in horror. Finally, she is institutionalized.
It is a passive resistance by self-mutilation, the only existing way possible in a patriarchal traditional society.
The unconscious emerges through dreams and often by ideas associated through metaphorical images (metonymy).
She refuses this world because she is not understood! She didn’t try to explain because she knows that they would not understand! She repeats: “You don’t understand.”
Even her brother-in-law, who is attracted to her, considers her as a perfectly ordinary woman, but eventually starts to question his own reality, so her behavior is considered as madness. But a small doubt starts when her brother-in-law is finally asking himself: “Maybe the fool is me, myself?”
The tape “Mongolian Mark I -Flowers of night Flowers of the Day” was breathtakingly compelling!
But her brother-in-law, in the tape “Mongolian Mark II,” was consumed by this image he knew he should never attempt to capture. A progression of scenes lurching from violence to tenderness, with no extreme left unexplored…
Art gives another dimension to Yeong-hye’s existence and for a brief moment, she felt alive again when she said, on page 97: “Flowers are stopping the dreams from coming back!”
This was not expected. She accepted him painting her body without any apprehension of what might happen to her, but the long painting instore in the contacts of two bodies what the traditional Korean society – patriarchal culture seems to ignore: the preamble of an erotic–sexual rapport and by consequence, after a long time or for the first time, Yeong-hye has sexual desire, which instead of being an expression of neuroticism is the expression of normality and also her particular identity as a human being emerging from a very traditional woman’s world.
Writing expresses a fine sensuality of Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law: “…that body which he had spent so many hours close beside yet which he had touched only with the tip of his brush” page 100.
All of his energy was taken up in trying to cope with the excitement, the heightened awareness of living in the present moment.
Dreams, particularly through the disturbing visions she experiences, drive her decision not to eat animal products and meat. That is certainly her unconsciousness, but it can be seen also as a metaphor for the resistance she makes to a traditional society (very collective or collective community in Korea) that does not take into consideration the individuals only in their relationship with the family and the community.
The Vegetarian reads like a parable about quiet resistance and its consequences; it’s also a questioning of Korean culture, in which conformity has a particular resonance.
Through sparse, dreamlike prose, the novel delves into the unconscious mind, the body, and the nature of desire, revealing how one woman’s passive defiance ripples through the lives of those around her, challenging the societal norms that bind them.
*More than three hundred thousand Koreans served alongside American soldiers in that conflict.