The Vegetarian

The novel opens from the perspective of Mr. Cheong, whose wife, Yeong-hye, is “completely unremarkable in every way” (11). Mr. Cheong is grateful for his wife’s “passive personality” (11), which has allowed him to live a calm, unpretentious lifestyle. While Mr. Cheong appreciates his “completely ordinary wife” (12) who cooks and cleans for him while saying very little, she does have one distinct characteristic: Yeong-hye refuses to wear bras. Even when he does convince her to wear a bra out of the house, “she’d have it unhooked barely a minute after leaving the house” (13). 

At around the five-year mark of their marriage, Yeong-hye alters her behavior. He comes across her standing in front of the fridge in the early hours of the morning. When he asks her why she is standing there, she is “unresponsive” (15) until finally she breaks her silence to say, “I had a dream” (16). Mr. Cheong is unnerved and goes to sleep with the feeling that he doesn’t “even want to reach out to her with words” (17). In the morning, when Mr. Cheong wakes up late, he is angry with Yeong-hye for not waking him. He stumbles into the kitchen to find her back in front of the fridge, with “the kitchen floor […] covered with plastic bags […] Beef for shabu-shabu, belly pork, two sides of black beef shin” (17). She is throwing away all the meat that they had stored away, despite Mr. Cheong yelling at her. 

Yeong-hye continues her task as Mr. Cheong demands to know what she is doing. When he grabs her wrist, she repeats, “I had a dream” (18). Mr. Cheong calls his work to say that he’ll be late. Yeong-hye hasn’t ironed his shirt or done any of the things she normally does, so Mr. Cheong manages to get out of the house himself and wonders about the “strange behavior of [his] even-stranger wife” (19). 

As Mr. Cheong begins to prepare for his day at work, the narrative shifts to an italicized section of text where Yeong-hye narrates what has happened in her dream: Feeling “frightened” and “cold” (19), she finds a “long bamboo stick strung with great blood-red gashes of meat” (20). Yeong-hye runs away, still in the dream, and hides because she is covered in blood. 

When Mr. Cheong comes home, Yeong-hye has only prepared vegetarian food. She has given up eggs and milk, along with meat. He thinks to himself, “How on earth could she be so self-centered?” (21) and tries to argue with her about eating meat. Mr. Cheong asks Yeong-hye how long she will abstain from eating meat. She responds, “I suppose … forever” (21). Mr. Cheong thinks about the commitment of becoming vegetarian and feels confused because Yeong-hye had always prepared excellent meat dishes.

As time goes on and Yeong-hye continues to refuse to eat meat, Mr. Cheong watches her growing “thinner by the day” and her complexion become “that of a hospital patient” (23). She no longer pays attention to him, and she stops having intercourse with him because his “body smells of meat” (24). Mr. Cheong begins wondering if her mental state is stable and feels shut out of the “agonizing dream” (25) that has caused his wife’s behavior. Yeong-hye continues to narrate her strange experiences, referencing a “pool of blood in the barn” (27) that she keeps seeing in her nightmares.

Mr. Cheong gets angry with Yeong-hye when she isn’t ready to leave for a dinner with his colleagues. He is grateful when she applies her “rich coral lipstick,” which “alleviate[s] her sickly pallor” (28), and they go to the restaurant. When they arrive, Mr. Cheong realizes, to his “utter mortification” (28) that his wife is not wearing a bra. Throughout the meal, Mr. Cheong is increasingly embarrassed by his wife’s behavior as she refuses to eat meat or be courteous to his coworkers and supervisor. After the dinner, Mr. Cheong concludes that “neither rage nor persuasion would succeed in moving [Yeong-hye]” (33), and he makes phone calls to his wife’s mother and sister.

That weekend, Yeong-hye’s father calls and yells at her over the phone. Yeong-hye, who is cooking, puts the phone receiver down and walks away. Mr. Cheong picks up the phone and apologizes to his father-in-law and is surprised when Yeong-hye’s father says, “I’m the one who’s ashamed” (36). Mr. Cheong is shocked to hear “this patriarchal man apologize” (37). The two men decide that they will have a family meal to try to address Yeong-hye’s refusal to eat meat. 

Later that day, Mr. Cheong is frustrated with not having his physical needs met. Since Yeong-hye stopped being intimate with him, he eventually starts to force himself on her. Each time he rapes her, she stops responding, “her face blank” (38), and Mr. Cheong feels as if she is “a ‘comfort woman’ dragged in against her will, and [he is] the Japanese soldier demanding her services” (38). 

Three days before the family meal, Mr. Cheong finds his wife peeling potatoes in the kitchen, wearing only a pair of pants. She has peeled an enormous number of the vegetables because she is hungry. Yeong-hye has more dreams about meat, blood, and danger. In one dream, she “can only trust [her] breasts now” (41) and doesn’t understand why her “edges” are “sharpening” as she becomes skinnier (41). 

At the family dinner, tensions rise as Yeong-hye’s mother and sister attempt to feed her delicious dishes of meat. Mr. Cheong watches “a small flurry of unease [run] through the assembled family” (44) as Yeong-hye continues to refuse to eat any of the offerings. After several failed efforts, Yeong-hye’s father begins shouting, “Don’t you understand what your father’s telling you? If he tells you to eat, you eat!” (45). Yeong-hye’s father tries to push a piece of sweet and sour pork into her mouth. She pushes the chopsticks away and says “Father, I don’t eat meat” (46). Her father slaps her across the face so hard that “blood showed through the skin of her cheek” (46). The family continues to try to hold her down and feed her, but she refuses to open her teeth. Mr. Cheong watches as his father-in-law flies “into a passion again, and [strikes Yeong-hye] in the face once more” (47). Yeong-hye picks up a fruit knife and slices her wrists open. 

Yeong-hye narrates a scene from her childhood where her father chains up a dog that had bit her on the leg. Her father, rather than just punishing the dog in a traditional way, “says he heard somewhere that driving a dog to keep running until the point of death is considered a milder punishment” (49). The young Yeong-hye watches as her father ties the dog to his motorcycle and runs it in circles until the dog is “dragged along the ground” (49) and dies. Later that night, Yeong-hye eats a whole bowlful of the dog’s flesh, which is served because “the saying goes that for a wound caused by a dog bite to heal you have to eat that same dog” (49); at that time, Yeong-hye “really didn’t care” about the dog’s death (50). 

At the hospital, Mr. Cheong discusses recent events with Yeong-hye’s sister and brother-in-law. Later, Yeong-hye’s mother comes to visit, bringing with her a bag filled with “black goat” (53) with the intention of trying to feed it to Yeong-hye. Mr. Cheong watches Yeong-hye’s mother make a cup of the black goat for Yeong-hye, telling her that it is an herbal remedy. Immediately after drinking a sip, Yeong-hye gets out of her hospital bed and throws up. She is weak and can barely carry her IV bag, which begins to fill with blood. 

Mr. Cheong sleeps at the hospital and has a dream where he is “killing someone” (57) and eating them. When he wakes up, he thinks for a moment that Yeong-hye might be dead and feels “an odd trembling inside [him]self” (57), but when he tests to see if she is breathing, she is still alive. When he wakes, Yeong-hye has disappeared from her hospital bed.

Mr. Cheong finds Yeong-hye on a bench in the hospital garden wearing her hospital gown around her waist, breasts exposed. He thinks to himself “I do not know that woman” (59). She asks him, “Have I done something wrong?” (60). When he forces her fist open, which is holding something, a small bird falls out. Mr. Cheong notices “tooth marks” on the bird’s body, with “vivid red bloodstains” (60).