34 pages • 1 hour read
Han KangThe Vegetarian
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Meat
Yeong-hye’s decision to become vegetarian creates a series of conflicts, with meat at the center. Each of her family members desperately attempts to get her to eat meat, with no success. Yeong-hye connects the idea of meat with the human body and with negative childhood experiences. Early on, she begins refusing sex with her husband, telling him that his “body smells of meat” (24). Her conflation of animal meat and the human body is continued as she tries to escape her corporeal self by not eating. One of her traumatic childhood memories involves eating an “entire bowlful” (49) of dog meat after her father murders the animal for biting her. Yeong-hye seems to be trying to reverse the effects of her negative actions, feeling that the “lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there” (56), and she is responsible for getting them out of her body. As she seeks to become less and less human, she refuses to even be in the same room as meat. Yeong-hye’s descent into asceticism is directly produced by her desire to heal herself of her earlier habits as a meat-eater.
Trees and Vegetation
Trees and plants are frequently juxtaposed with the physical body. Yeong-hye is most often related to these references as she continues with her vegetarianism. As her body changes, it becomes more plantlike and less human. The brother-in-law comments that her Mongolian mark, a blue birthmark, seems like “perhaps a mark of photosynthesis, and he realize[s] to his surprise that there was nothing at all sexual about it; it was more vegetal than sexual” (90). This observation foreshadows Yeong-hye’s eventual attempt to become a tree with “leaves” and “roots” (154).
The human body is presented as tainted and often, wounded, while trees gain a more mystical quality. In the third part of the text, In-hye often looks at the trees as if they hold something important. On the bus to the hospital, In-hye observes the “woods in this torrential rain, like a huge animal suppressing a roar” (130). The animal contained by the woods is different than the other references in the novel to animals, which are usually about meat. In her concluding scene, In-hye stares out the window of the bus “fiercely at the trees” (188). The humans in the novel seem to long for something that the trees have and that humans do not. This is also reflected earlier in the brother-in-law’s desire for having sex with Yeong-hye with flowers painted on their bodies. He wonders if they could “seem like one body, a hybrid of plant, animal and human?” (120). This hybridity shows up throughout the novel, constantly challenging the ideas of what it means to be a human.
Breasts
Yeong-hye’s breasts feature significantly in the novel, both from her perspective and from the observations of those around her. Both her husband, Mr. Cheong, and her other sexual partner, her brother-in-law, are particularly focused on Yeong-hye’s breasts. Mr. Cheong is perturbed by Yeong-hye’s refusal to wear a bra. His concluding remarks about Yeong-hye in the hospital courtyard observe her “gaunt collarbones, emaciated breasts and brown nipples completely exposed” (59). For Mr. Cheong, Yeong-hye’s frequent choice to show her breasts in public is reprehensible and part of her strangeness.
Yeong-hye and the brother-in-law both feel completely different than Mr. Cheong regarding her breasts. Early on, Yeong-hye describes her positive feelings toward her breasts because “nothing can be killed by them” (41). As the part of her body that doesn’t “sharpen” (41) and can sustain life naturally, Yeong-hye views her breasts as something trustworthy and healthy. The brother-in-law is also fascinated by her body and breasts and paints “huge clusters of flowers […] covering the skin from her collarbone to her breasts” (95). These bright flowers stay on Yeong-hye’s body, part of her transformation into something less animalistic.
