The Vegetarian by Han Kang
A review of The Vegetarian by Han Kang.
“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her successes had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn’t understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.”
The Vegetarian by Han Kang (2016). Published by Hogarth Press in English.
For the longest time, there’s been so much hype around this book, but I never actually got the chance to read it. A damn shame, of course, since I own an actual physical copy of the book.
But, one day, as I waited for my library books to ship to my local branch and I could devour them one by one, I picked up my copy of The Vegetarian and just started reading. Sitting outside on the porch, I ended up finishing the first fifty pages in about thirty minutes, and, from there, it was an easy ride to the end.
I can see why this gained international attention. It’s probably one of the first Korean books that many people have read, especially one by a woman. Han Kang, already an established name in South Korea, would become internationally acclaimed, but there’s something special I’ve noticed when it comes to feminine literature coming out of Korea.
I loosely define feminine as being authored by a woman. We see Bae Suah and Kim Hye-soon delving on similar themes, and, just recently to me writing this, Almond made a splash (with the help of BTS, of course).
Korean literature is absolutely fascinating to me, and I can go on forever, but let’s go straight into this review. Can’t lose focus on The Vegetarian, right?
Content / Writing
I already knew the basic premise of the book going into it. What I did not expect, having not read anything about the actual book itself, was the way it was actually structured.
The first arc of the book is narrated by Yeong-hye’s husband. He wants a boring, mundane life where he doesn’t really stick out from society. This is why he marries Yeong-hye; he isn’t attracted to her at all.
He gets aroused by her, especially because she doesn’t seem to believe in bras, but he doesn’t seem to actually care about her beyond the fact she’s his wife and suits the role perfectly. He wanted a woman who is ordinary and she fits the bill.
But then, sparking the events of the book, she has a dream. And she throws thousands of won’s worth of meat into the trash, only making her husband a meager seaweed soup with a side of kimchi the next day for breakfast.
When he takes her to his company dinner at a Chinese-Korean restaurant, she is mocked for her sudden vegetarianism and refusal to eat meat, despite the majority of the dishes not catering to her newfound diet. Her husband thinks she has gone insane, so he requests help from her family to quote-on-quote fix her.
This bleeds into the chronological narratives of the next two sections, which switch into third person. The second portion is narrated by Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, who is also a major creep, and the third and final arc is narrated by Yeong-hye’s sister.
Through the switching of narrators, we see how harmful other people can be towards mental health and general attitudes. Many of our characters are selfish, unwilling to understand Yeong-hye or her decisions. She is deemed mad, an archetypal way to demean women, and cast away by the men of society.
This novel does a great job commenting the status of women in South Korea. Yeong-hye’s husband didn’t even seem to care about her mental decline, only seeming to care about his own selfish agenda. He didn’t love her.
He also full on rapes her in one scene, where he shoves her to the ground, rips off her trousers, and inserts himself into her despite her struggling. Then in the second portion of the book, her own brother-in-law wants to have sex with her and gets aroused by his husband’s sister. This novel is a spectacle when it comes to the male gaze, interrogating in a straightforward manner how all seems hopeless at the end of the day.
Overall Thoughts
The Vegetarian is an absolutely fascinating novel, and definitely a deep dive into the realm of Korean literature. I recommend Han Kang’s work to anyone just starting out, because while her concepts and stories tend to be a bit darker, she’s straightforward.
Someone once compared her to Haruki Murakami to me and I immediately agreed, but Han is the female voice we need. This is an important novel, albeit grotesque at times, when it comes to understanding feminist Korean literature. It’s both a psychology and a societal study, nuanced in its tones, but also so powerful by the end.
