One February night, Mr. Cheong wakes up and notices that Yeong-hye, his wife, is not beside him. He finds her in the kitchen, crouched down, wearing only her nightgown. “I had a dream,” she whispers. The next morning, she is still there, her hair disheveled, emptying the fridge and freezer: meat, milk, eggs—everything ends up in the trash.
“All around her, the kitchen floor was covered in plastic bags and airtight containers, scattered everywhere: there wasn’t a single inch of space to step without crushing something. Beef for shabu shabu, pork belly, two black ox shanks, vacuum-sealed squid, sliced eel my mother-in-law had sent us ages ago from the countryside, dried croakers tied with yellow string, unopened packs of dumplings, and an endless number of packages filled with who-knows-what, fished out from the depths of the fridge. There was a rustling sound: my wife was placing things around her, one by one, into black trash bags. Finally, I lost my temper.”
Han Kang published The Vegetarian in 2007, but it was in 2015—coinciding with its English translation—that the novel gained widespread recognition and acclaim. The story is divided into three parts (“The Vegetarian”; “Mongolian Mark”; “Flaming Trees”), which follow Yeong-hye’s transformation, marked by silences and renunciations.
The dream that sets everything in motion is a haunting one, filled with blood, flesh, and a guilt that seems to lodge itself in the body: “The lives of the animals I’ve devoured have all taken root there.” Traumas from the past blend with recurring nightmares: the beatings she endured, conforming to family expectations, the memory of the dog that bit her and was then forced to eat. Day by day, Yeong-hye’s body wastes away: she grows thinner, her skin pale, her cheekbones sharp, her gaze empty. The only moment of respite comes when her brother-in-law, a video artist obsessed with the Mongolian mark on her skin, paints her body with plants and flowers. In that tiny mark, resembling a bruise, he recognizes “something ancient, something pre-evolutionary, or perhaps a trace of photosynthesis,” as if his words pinpointed an affinity and a destiny that had always been hers.
The final part of the novel focuses on In-hye as she cares for her younger sister. Three years have passed, and Yeong-hye is hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Her weight has dropped below thirty kilograms, and she spends her time imitating trees in perfect verticality: her long, thick hair, her hands planted like roots in the ground. It seems she wants to let herself die. Yet hers is not a renunciation of life but of human and animal life, to remain upright and still among the trees, rejecting a world of violence and oppression.
Every attempt to feed her proves futile; Yeong-hye contracts her esophagus, making treatment impossible. Her intestines have atrophied, and it is then that she confides her secret to her sister. She is no longer an animal; she doesn’t need to eat, she only needs water. And when her sister asks if she has ever seen a plant speak, Yeong-hye responds with an enigmatic smile, “Words and thoughts will soon all disappear.”
In-hye doesn’t know how to interpret her younger sister’s behavior, but by staying by her side, she comes to understand her state of mind. In her own life, she has experienced the same unease. “Perhaps, at some point, Yeong-hye simply let go of the thin thread that tied her to everyday life.”
In-hye recalls the image of her sister standing on her hands. Had she mistaken the hospital’s concrete floor for the soft earth of the woods? Had her body transformed into a sturdy trunk, with white roots sprouting from her hands and anchoring themselves in the black soil? Had her legs stretched upward toward the sky, while her arms pushed down to the very core of the Earth, her back rigid and taut to support this dual growth? As the sun’s rays bathed her body, had the water soaking the ground been absorbed by her cells, making flowers bloom between her legs? When Yeong-hye balanced upside down, stretching every fiber of her being, were these the things that awakened in her soul?
Han Kang has stated on multiple occasions that the character of Yeong-hye was inspired by a line from Yi Sang, a Korean poet of the early 20th century who sought in poetry an escape from Japanese colonial violence: “I believe humans should become plants.” These words offer a precious key to understanding Yeong-hye’s transformation: a protest and a surrender, in the face of an unbearable anguish.
