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The Vegetarian

29 min read

Author: Han Kang

Content Warning

Descriptions of sexual assault.

The concepts Han Kang conveys are striking, but I just did not enjoy reading this—it was tiring. I enjoyed the book more toward the end. I could not stand the male perspectives from the first two parts, yet they were crucial to understanding the main character’s mental state.

characters & settings

  • Yeong-hye
    • Mr. Cheong: husband {scum of the earth}
    • In-hye: sister
      • Husband
        • Survivor of the Gwangju massacre
      • Ji-woo: son
    • Yeong-ho: younger brother
  • Old apartment
  • Hospital
  • Yeong-hye’s new apartment
  • In-hye’s husband’s studio spaces
  • In-hye’s apartment
  • Ch’ukseong Psychiatric Hospital

notes

  • Obedience
    • Liking “passive personality” — gender norms of submission, deference to husband, patriarchy (3). Quelling own inferiority complex with a wife who willingly submits. Marriage not as an act of love, but rather an ego boost.
    • “I’ve always inclined toward the middle course in life.” Taking advantage of circumstances to thrive within a rigid power system (4).
  • Body
    • It’s so weird how he makes such note of her lack of bra (7). Sense of entitlement and control over a woman’s body. Lack of empathy. Body as object.
    • Body as meat (24)
    • {The emphasis on describing the wife’s nipples makes me uncomfortable}
    • {Why do Korean novels mention penises so often and openly?}
    • Brother-in-law thought the line of her thigh could be rounder (109) {Who is he to judge the shape of a woman’s body?}
  • Marital expectations
    • Wife’s duty to keep house (15)
    • Physical demands as a given (23), compliance rather than active participation? Though she did make the first move
    • Brother in law understands Mr. Cheong’s reasoning for casting her off
      • Cheong victimizes himself because he no longer reaps the physical benefits from the marriage
      • Women’s bodies as property, access as a given right
  • “I had a dream” (14)
    • “Dark woods” → Inferno (16)
    • Eating raw meat in a barn, pushing through it to find a way out (17)
    • Horror, violence (41)
    • Loathing masked as affection—resentment toward husband? (42)
      • “After this first time, it was easier for me to do it again, but each time, I would be seized by strange, ominous premonitions” (46) — foreshadowing? {I think she wants to kill him and is terrified by her own inclinations toward violence, hence the vegetarianism.}
    • Desire to kill, unending hunger, violence and abuse (49). She is afraid of herself.
    • Face arising from her stomach (173)
      • Sometimes that of a rotting corpse, sometimes bloody
  • Rationalization of own thoughts
    • Doesn’t want to take to hospital for treatment (27) — lack of care? Denial of mental illness “this kind of thing isn’t even a real illness.” Rationalization.
    • Narrator convinces himself of things a lot (30)
  • {What is vegetarianism an allegory for? Women’s bodily autonomy?}
  • Collectivism
    • Rudeness towards the wife: expecting others to adhere to social norms. Collectivist society (35).
    • {Why does him getting fired hinge on his wife’s behavior? Shouldn’t it be based on performance and not social performances?}
    • Valuing production and image over actual person (44)
      • Coworkers treatment of him after meeting his wife vs. after big accomplishment
      • Ashamed by wife’s appearance
        • Braless
        • Skinny
        • Asks her to put makeup on
  • Comparing your wife to her sister is foul (40). Being aroused by her voice over the phone is crazy work holy.
  • Sexual assault (45)
    • Comparison to a comfort woman
    • Aroused at resistance
    • Marital rape in both parts 1 and 3
  • Intervention
    • Family targeting symptoms and not the root cause, lack of understanding
    • {I think everyone’s resistance to the wife’s vegetarianism is absurd and makes it hard to suspend disbelief}
    • Violence in response to being cornered (61)
  • Trauma response
    • “It was the quiet tone of a person who didn’t belong anywhere, someone who had passed into a border area between states of being” (104)
    • Disengagement with life (128)
      • Violence in eyes
      • “lying there utterly without resistance, yet armored by the power of her own renunciation” (130)
    • Detachment of spirit from body (130–131)
    • Descending into silence, retreating from self (191)
    • In-hye’s self blame (201), replaying the moment and wondering what she could’ve done to reach a different outcome
    • Anorexia nervosa, schizophrenia (207–208)
    • Victim of beatings as child (233)
  • Blue, petal-like mark
    • Purity culture
    • Mystery, wanting something you can’t have
    • Romanticization of sickly state (106)
    • “he realized to his surprise that there was nothing at all sexual about it; it was more vegetal than sexual” (124)
  • Body paint
    • She doesn’t want it to come off (133)
      • Stops dreams (145)
      • Return of desire (159)
  • The art piece
  • Desire
    • Initiating with her ex husband
    • Complete obliteration of it after having dreams
    • Body as a husk, body as just a body, detached from all connotations and imposed feelings
  • Relationship between mental health, body, and sexuality
    • The body is not inherently sexual, it is society that programs it to be so
  • In-hye’s envy toward Yeon-hye’s mental illness
  • Trees, flowers

part 1: the vegetarian

  • First-person POV from husband
  • Societal expectations and shunning of those who do not conform, especially women

part 2: the Mongolian mark

  • Third-person, past-tense POV from In-hye’s husband
  • Transition from sexual desire to artistic reverence, which then falls back down again to a base level of lust
  • Taking advantage of Yeong-hye’s mental state
    • Crying at the end
  • Friends: M, J, P
  • Why does his wife commit them both to a mental hospital at the end? Who gets to define insanity? Overwhelming feelings of anger?

part 3: the flaming trees

  • Third-person, present-tense POV from In-hye’s perspective
  • In-hye’s affection stemming from protective instinct rather than real love
  • Marriage with someone you dislike
  • Living vs. enduring
    • Denying happiness from self

discussion questions

question 1

In Part 3, “The Flaming Trees”, In-hye expresses envy at her sister’s situation, thinking: “She was no longer able to cope with all that her sister reminded her of. She’d been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross, unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled Yeong-hye to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind, still a prisoner.”

In a Goodreads review, author R. F. Kuang describes her journey as “whittling [herself] down to an idea.”

Initially, in Parts 1 and 2, Yeong-hye is able to function in society, yet continuous intervention from outside parties contribute to her mental downfall.

Question: How does the novel portray the link between mental illness and liberation? And who gets a say in defining insanity?

summary

Our group approached this question from two perspectives: detailed and psychological, and broad and allegorical. 

First, we defined insanity as being so mentally unwell that it affects one’s physical health. At that stage, one is not in the right state of mind and is not capable of taking care of themselves, and thus they cannot properly consent to external influences, either.

We then approached the question from the view that Yeong-hye’s mental illness cannot be seen as liberation, as she was still suffering. Throughout the novel, she tries to avoid her dreams, even going as far as to allow her brother in law to paint flowers on her nude body and have sex with her to get rid of the distressing images. My group mates questioned whether she would have wanted the same things—vegetarianism, participating in the brother-in-laws art piece, and eventual fasting to become a tree—if she had been mentally sound. They then dove into hypotheticals, asking whether things would have been different if Yeong-hye’s father had not shoved meat into her mouth, but tofu, and whether she would be the same if she were instead placed in an artist’s commune.

I personally do not think that the book was meant to be interpreted literally, but rather allegorically as a critique of broader societal structures. Thus, I felt that it is unproductive to examine the nitty gritty of Yeong-hye’s psychology. Yes, she may have behaved differently if removed from the novel’s setting, but the setting is what makes the novel. 

After a while of discussion, another group mate brought up the bigger picture, connecting Yeong-hye’s plight to pressure from society, cultures, and norms. Her mental state is a direct result of unequal social hierarchies and the patriarchy. A lot of her illness can be attributed to society’s projection of standards and desires onto her, making her a stranger to her own body and existence. Thus, in such a state, it is hard to escape other than removing herself from the world physically, whether it be through self harm or delusions of becoming a tree.

Rather than focusing on Yeong-hye’s mind, I prefer to consider her situation in terms of body, mind, and spirit. I believe she is desperate to free her soul from the impure traces of her body, one that inevitably does harm to others, yet cannot escape due to the intense gridlock that comes with being a woman in a patriarchal society that expects absolute conformity. Her retreat into herself and eventual decision to become a tree reflects an exaggeratedly Buddhist notion of detachment from the material. I wonder if Buddhism in opposition to the popular Christianity and vegetarianism over eating meat demonstrate her contrarian desire to view all life as worthy of veneration. It makes me wonder why this respect for life even goes against the grain at all, and how the popular disregard for “lesser” forms of life (in the Bible, God basically instructs Man to rule over and care for all other animals, whereas in Buddhism, all dharmas are buddadharmas, or all things are divine) connects to the subjugation of women in the hierarchical, male-dominated society.

notes

  • Background: Han Kang said this came from a quote she’d read
    • “All people should be trees”
    • A tree can do no harm
  • Link between mental illness and liberation
    • Not seen as liberation
    • She was suffering
      • Trying to avoid dreams
      • Painting, sex, flowers
  • Don’t consider liberation because still some type of torture
  • Would she want the same thing if it had not been for her mental state?
    • Is that consent?
  • Where do you think the mental illness started?
    • Once it starts affecting your physical health
      • Not in the right state of mind
      • Not capable of taking care of self → cannot consent
  • What if shoving tofu in mouth?
  • Liberation: sunlight, water, air
  • Bigger picture: society, pressures, norms, cultures
    • Social hierarchy
    • Patriarchy
      • Men’s perspective: inequalities
    • A lot of her illnesses can come from social norms saying she wants something, but does she really want it?
    • Social pressure
  • External factors, what if she’s removed to an artist’s commune?
    • Less intensified
    • Genetic, still problems, different manifestation
      • Different situation, external impact on outcomes
  • Dr. Hall: Societal issues, violence, control
    • Instead of being able to do anything, you want to escape
    • Hard to do in any form other than removing self physically

question 2

In Part 2, Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law can’t stop fantasizing about her Mongolian mark. Yet when he sees it, “he realized to his surprise that there was nothing at all sexual about it; it was more vegetal than sexual” (digital version p. 124). When he realizes Yeong-hye’s detachment from her body, his perspective becomes purely that of an artist appreciating the human form. But when desire is added to the equation, he blurs the lines of ethicality by using it to his advantage.

Question: To what extent is the “art” in Part 2 an act of violence rather than expression? Can art that relies on exploitation be authentic?

summary

This question drew a long pause from the group, so I elaborated further by stating my point of view. As an artist, I understand where the brother-in-law is coming from. Creation is often tied to the erotic, but there is also a fine line between tasteful and obscene. I found his artistic vision interesting, yet I also felt that it was extremely bizarre. I believe that if he had hired models instead of exploiting Yeong-hye, the art piece would be less disturbing.

One group mate wondered why he even cared about the Mongolian mark in the first place. Another brought up the fact that mostly children have this mark, so he might have associated it with innocence that he had long lost and wanted to return to. This reminds me of Friedrich Schiller’s essay, On Simple and Sentimental Poetry, in which he argues that a poet either is nature or seeks nature. The former is a simple poet, the latter sentimental. Thus, in this case, the brother-in-law would be a sentimental artist.

Though the concept of the Mongolian mark among a blossom of flowers on a person’s body is interesting, it is disturbing that he acted on his own desires and exploited a vulnerable person. One group mate stated that art reliant on exploitation cannot be authentic, but how would you know? Another said that the brother-in-law seems to jump back and forth across the boundaries of an artist and a man during the process of creating and filming. This reminded me of Aristotle’s Poetics, where he describes the act of creation as an act of embodying something beyond oneself, an act of madness.

This led the conversation in the direction of separating art from the artist. Someone claimed that it depends on the potential scope of damage and the amount of “acceptable” harm. Does the artistic merit outweigh the artist’s transgressions? Or is the artist doing more harm than good? And, furthermore, how can the audience know the nature of the artist? 

This leads me to the argument that artists are often elevated to a different plane of existence, but their fall can be just as rapid as their rise. Once an artist shows their human nature, their creations lose their allure. Art must transcend the human, whether it be by rising above or diving deeper within.

notes

  • Taken care of, pitiful before knowing about mark
  • Why did he care about the mark?
    • Was he imagining?
    • Mostly children have this mark?
      • Innocence?
      • Didn’t want to face his reflection: struggling with aging, struggling in marriage, trying to rewind time to be happy
        • Freedom of expression
      • {Purity culture}
  • No, but how would you know?
  • Two identities: artist while doing the art, in process of art/filming he becomes just a man/brother-in-law
    • Jumping between boundaries
    • {Madness}
  • Art and artist
    • Amount of damage someone can do
    • How much harm is acceptable?
    • Scope of impact
    • Cut-off-point
    • Do you know about it?

thoughts

  • I actually hate this book so much, the descriptions are disgusting. I would DNF this if I didn’t have to read it for a class.
  • I enjoyed the book more toward the end. I could not stand the male perspectives.
  • Cathartic for women.
  • Life lives on life. Lack of rituals in late capitalistic society.

highlights

　Part 1: The Vegetarian 　 　　— Page: 3, added on Sun May 18 12:41:01 2025

The passive personality of this woman in whom I could detect neither freshness nor charm, or anything especially refined, suited me down to the ground.

　　— Page: 4, added on Sun May 18 12:45:59 2025

And so it was only natural that I would marry the most run-of-the-mill woman in the world. As for women who were pretty, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the daughters of rich families — they would only have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence.

　　— Page: 5, added on Sun May 18 12:46:11 2025

completely ordinary

　　— Page: 12, added on Sun May 18 12:50:50 2025

I could have reached out to her, and my hand would have encountered her warm skin. But for some reason I found myself unable to touch her. I didn’t even want to reach out to her with words.

　　— Page: 23, added on Sun May 18 12:58:26 2025

In the past, she’d generally been willing to comply with my physical demands, and there’d even been the occasional time when she’d been the one to make the first move.

　　— Page: 25, added on Sun May 18 13:00:30 2025

All because of this agonizing dream, from which I was shut out, had no way of knowing and moreover didn’t want to know, she continued to waste away.

　　— Page: 27, added on Sun May 18 13:03:11 2025

If you knew how hard I’ve always worked to keep my nerves in check. Other people just get a bit flustered, but for me everything gets confused, speeds up. Quick, quicker. The hand holding the knife was working so quickly, I felt heat prickle the back of my neck. My hand, the chopping board, the meat, and then the knife, slicing cold into my finger.

　　— Page: 31, added on Sun May 18 13:54:15 2025

She was wearing a slightly clinging black blouse, and to my utter mortification I saw that the outline of her nipples was clearly visible through the fabric. Without a doubt, she’d come out without a bra. When the other guests surreptitiously craned their necks, no doubt wanting to be sure that they really were seeing what they thought they were, the eyes of the executive director’s wife met mine. Feigning composure, I registered the curiosity, astonishment, and contempt that were revealed in turn in her eyes.

　　— Page: 34, added on Sun May 18 13:55:12 2025

Meat eating is a fundamental human instinct, which means vegetarianism goes against human nature, right? It just isn’t natural.”

　　— Page: 35, added on Sun May 18 14:05:21 2025

“Well, I must say, I’m glad I’ve still never sat down with a proper vegetarian. I’d hate to share a meal with someone who considers eating meat repulsive, just because that’s how they themselves personally feel…don’t you agree?”

　　— Page: 44, added on Sun May 18 14:24:27 2025

After the meal at the restaurant, other people in the company had been noticeably cool toward me, but once the project I’d pushed through began to yield some far-from-negligible profits, all that unpleasantness appeared to have been entirely forgotten.

　　— Page: 46, added on Sun May 18 17:04:33 2025

After this first time, it was easier for me to do it again, but each time, I would be seized by strange, ominous premonitions.

　　— Page: 46, added on Sun May 18 17:04:44 2025

couldn’t stand the way her expression, which made it seem as though she were a woman of bitter experience, who had suffered many hardships, niggled at my conscience

　　— Page: 74, added on Sun May 18 17:22:50 2025

Yells and howls, threaded together layer upon layer, are enmeshed to form that lump. Because of meat. I ate too much meat. The lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there. Blood and flesh, all those butchered bodies are scattered in every nook and cranny, and though the physical remnants were excreted, their lives still stick stubbornly to my insides.

　　— Page: 82, added on Sun May 18 17:32:50 2025

How on earth could a complete stranger be expected to tease out the inner logic of something he himself had dreamed up, to find a way to make it come alive?

　　— Page: 83, added on Sun May 18 17:33:43 2025

He had to force himself to accept that the middle-aged man, who had a baseball cap concealing his receding hairline and a baggy sweater at least attempting to do the same for his paunch, was himself.

　　— Page: 87, added on Sun May 18 17:36:51 2025

In his mind, the fact that his sister-in-law still had a Mongolian mark on her buttocks became inexplicably bound up with the image of men and women having sex, their naked bodies completely covered with painted flowers

　　— Page: 87, added on Sun May 18 17:38:19 2025

Though her face was missing, the woman in his sketch was undoubtedly his sister-in-law. No, it had to be her. He’d imagined what her naked body must look like and began to draw, finishing it off with a dot like a small blue petal in the middle of her buttocks, and he’d got an erection.

　　— Page: 89, added on Sun May 18 17:39:54 2025

He was becoming divided against himself. Was he a normal human being? More than that, a moral human being? A strong human being, able to control his own impulses? In the end, he found himself unable to claim with any certainty that he knew the answers to these questions, though he’d been so sure before.

　　— Page: 93, added on Sun May 18 17:42:14 2025

Everything about her sister pleased him — her single-lidded eyes; the way she spoke, so blunt as to be almost uncouth, and without his wife’s faintly nasal inflection; her drab clothes; her androgynously protruding cheekbones. She might well be called ugly in comparison with his wife, but to him she radiated energy, like a tree that grows in the wilderness, denuded and solitary.

　　— Page: 95, added on Sun May 18 17:43:00 2025

’s a good woman, he thought. The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive

　　— Page: 96, added on Sun May 18 17:43:48 2025

He’d pictured to himself his sister-in-law’s rented studio apartment, the one she’d shared with his wife back when they were young, pictured her curled up there on the bed, then switched to remembering how it had felt to carry her on his back, her body pressed up against his and staining his clothes with her blood, the feel of her chest and buttocks, imagined himself pulling down her trousers just enough to reveal the blue brand of the Mongolian mark

　　— Page: 99, added on Sun May 18 17:49:00 2025

He had felt suddenly sick. Even though those images had undeniably caused him agony, even though he’d hated them, the individual moments contained in the work, which he’d stayed up all night wrestling with, struggling to face up to the true nature of the emotions they provoked in him, had now come to feel like a form of violence.

　　— Page: 100, added on Sun May 18 17:51:13 2025

He was worn out, and life revolted him. He couldn’t cope with all these things it contaminated.

　　— Page: 101, added on Sun May 18 17:52:13 2025

Partly this was because he had yet to hear about the Mongolian mark, and thus regarded her as nothing more than an object of pity, albeit a faintly inscrutable one.

　　— Page: 103, added on Sun May 18 17:53:28 2025

“She was always so submissive — outwardly, at any rate. And for a woman who wasn’t quite all there to start with to be taking medication every day, well, she’s bound to get worse, and that’s all there is to it.”

　　— Page: 104, added on Sun May 18 17:58:39 2025

It was the quiet tone of a person who didn’t belong anywhere, someone who had passed into a border area between states of being

　　— Page: 113, added on Sat May 24 18:00:38 2025

He reproached himself for having used her as a kind of mental pornography, when she simply had an innocent wish to be naked. All the same, he was unable to deny that the image of her naked was now stamped indelibly on his brain, burned into him like a brand.

　　— Page: 120, added on Sat May 24 18:12:14 2025

They hung up without any unnecessary small talk. That was the kind of relationship they had these days — that of business partners who were careful to excise any superfluity from their dealings, and whose only shared business was their child.

　　— Page: 121, added on Sat May 24 18:13:04 2025

When it was all over, she was crying. He couldn’t tell what these tears meant — pain, pleasure, passion, disgust, or some inscrutable loneliness that she would have been no more able to explain than he would have been to understand. He didn’t know.

　　— Page: 124, added on Sat May 24 18:15:45 2025

he realized to his surprise that there was nothing at all sexual about it; it was more vegetal than sexual

　　— Page: 125, added on Sat May 24 18:17:17 2025

Every time the brush swept over her skin he felt her flesh quiver delicately as if being tickled, and he shuddered. But it wasn’t arousal; rather, it was a feeling that stimulated something deep in his very core, passing through him like a continuous electric shock.

　　— Page: 127, added on Sat May 24 18:18:05 2025

This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated. But this was nothing so crass as carnal desire, not for her — rather, or so it seemed, what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented.

　　— Page: 128, added on Sat May 24 18:20:02 2025

It seemed enough for her to just deal with whatever it was that came her way, calmly and without fuss. Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, and thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time. If so, she would naturally have no energy left, not just for curiosity or interest but indeed for any meaningful response to all the humdrum minutiae that went on on the surface. What suggested to him that this might be the case was that, on occasion, her eyes would seem to reflect a kind of violence that could not simply be dismissed as passivity or idiocy or indifference, and which she would appear to be struggling to suppress. Just then she was staring down at her feet, her hands wrapped around the mug, shoulders hunched like a baby chick trying to get warm. And yet she didn’t look at all pitiful sitting there; instead, it made her appear uncommonly hard and self-contained, so much so that anyone watching would feel uneasy, and want to look away.

　　— Page: 130, added on Sat May 24 18:20:53 2025

Of course, he’d seen her naked body front-on before, when he’d accidentally disturbed her in her apartment, but the sight of her lying there utterly without resistance, yet armored by the power of her own renunciation, was so intense as to bring tears to his eyes.

　　— Page: 130, added on Sat May 24 18:22:52 2025

It was a body from which all superfluity had gradually been whittled away. Never before had he set eyes on such a body, a body that said so much and yet was no more than itself.

　　— Page: 131, added on Sat May 24 18:23:47 2025

Whether human, animal or plant, she could not be called a “person,” but then she wasn’t exactly some feral creature either — more like a mysterious being with qualities of both.

　　— Page: 134, added on Sat May 24 18:25:26 2025

Of course, his plan hadn’t been to get her aroused, only to film her naked, but all the same it was surprising that the process hadn’t provoked in her even the slightest feelings of desire.

　　— Page: 136, added on Sat May 24 18:28:36 2025

It’s true, he thought, she really is ordinary. It’s me who’s the crazy one.

　　— Page: 173, added on Sat May 24 18:48:35 2025

thought all I had to do was to stop eating meat and then the faces wouldn’t come back. But it didn’t work.” He knew he ought to concentrate on what she was saying, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from gradually falling closed. “And so…now I know. The face is inside my stomach. It rose up from inside my stomach

　　— Page: 187, added on Sat May 24 21:01:52 2025

Look, sister, I’m doing a handstand; leaves are growing out of my body, roots are sprouting out of my hands…they delve down into the earth. Endlessly, endlessly…yes, I spread my legs because I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch; I spread them wide…

　　— Page: 191, added on Sat May 24 21:04:26 2025

There’d been something faintly unsettling about the quiet smile playing around Yeong-hye’s mouth. What seemed to be happening was that Yeong-hye was retreating from herself, becoming as distant to herself as she was to her sister. A forlorn face, behind a mask of composure. This was clearly nothing like the melancholy that sometimes afflicted her husband, and yet in certain respects they were both baffling to her in exactly the same way. They were both descending further into silence.

　　— Page: 193, added on Sat May 24 21:05:38 2025

Something in his defenseless state had drawn her to him. What she’d wanted, from that afternoon, had been to use her own strength to allow him to rest. But despite devoting herself wholeheartedly to this goal, even after they were married he still looked perpetually worn out.

　　— Page: 211, added on Sat May 24 21:18:40 2025

She was no longer able to cope with all that her sister reminded her of. She’d been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross, unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled Yeong-hye to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind, still a prisoner.

　　— Page: 213, added on Sat May 24 21:20:30 2025

You will not be weak, In-hye told herself, her lips pressed tightly together. At any rate, she is a burden you cannot bear. No one blames you. You’ve done well to make it this far.

　　— Page: 214, added on Sat May 24 21:20:48 2025

When In-hye didn’t answer, Yeong-hye whispered one more time. “Sister…all the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters.”

　　— Page: 232, added on Sat May 24 21:30:17 2025

“No one can understand me…the doctors, the nurses, they’re all the same…they don’t even try to understand…they just force me to take medication, and stab me with needles.”

　　— Page: 233, added on Sat May 24 21:31:00 2025

Only after all this time was she able to understand why Yeong-hye had said what she did. Yeong-hye had been the only victim of their father’s beatings.

　　— Page: 234, added on Sat May 24 21:31:16 2025

Only Yeong-hye, docile and naive, had been unable to deflect their father’s temper or put up any form of resistance. Instead, she had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones.

　　— Page: 240, added on Sat May 24 21:34:51 2025

For the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. It had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. A time that she’d so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. All of it self-inflicted.

　　— Page: 240, added on Sat May 24 21:35:51 2025

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.

　　— Page: 244, added on Sat May 24 21:48:08 2025

The pain and shame had been washed away by the deep, exhausted sleep she slipped into immediately afterward. And yet later, at the breakfast table, she would all of a sudden find herself wanting to stab herself in the eyes with her chopsticks, or pour the boiling water from the kettle over her head.

　　— Page: 247, added on Sat May 24 21:50:47 2025

The pain feels like a hole swallowing her up, a source of intense fear and yet, at the same time, a strange, quiet peace.

　　— Page: 249, added on Sat May 24 21:51:55 2025

Might Yeong-hye’s current condition be the natural progression from what her sister has recently been experiencing? Perhaps, at some point, Yeong-hye had simply let fall the slender thread that had kept her connected with everyday life.

　　— Page: 251, added on Sat May 24 21:52:39 2025

There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually run out.

　　— Page: 254, added on Sat May 24 21:55:05 2025

When Yeong-hye had balanced upside down and stretched out every fiber in her body, had these things been awakened in her soul?

　　— Page: 262, added on Sat May 24 22:00:33 2025

“Stop it, for god’s sake. Please stop…” In-hye grabs the wrist of the head nurse, the one who is holding the syringe with the tranquilizer, as Yeong-hye quietly convulses against her chest.

　　— Page: 263, added on Sat May 24 22:00:39 2025

In-hye stares blankly at the splatter pattern. A whirling galaxy of bloody stars.

　　— Page: 264, added on Sat May 24 21:59:57 2025

It’s your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you’re free to do just as you like. And even that doesn’t turn out how you wanted.

　　— Page: 269, added on Sat May 24 22:02:30 2025

The writhing movements of those bodies made it seem as though they were trying to shuck off the human. What was it that had made him want to film such a thing? Had he staked everything of himself on those strange, desolate images — staked everything, and lost everything?

　　— Page: 271, added on Sat May 24 22:05:02 2025

If her husband and Yeong-hye hadn’t smashed through all the boundaries, if everything hadn’t splintered apart, then perhaps she was the one who would have broken down, and if she’d let that happen, if she’d let go of the thread, she might never have found it again

　　— Page: 272, added on Sat May 24 22:05:38 2025

Her black pupils fix on In-hye. What is stirring behind those eyes? What is she harboring inside her, beyond the reach of her sister’s imagination? What terror, what anger, what agony, what hell?

　　— Page: 273, added on Sat May 24 22:06:34 2025

“Perhaps this is all a kind of dream.” She bows her head. But then, as though suddenly struck by something, she brings her mouth right up to Yeong-hye’s ear and carries on speaking, forming the words carefully, one by one. “I have dreams too, you know. Dreams…and I could let myself dissolve into them, let them take me over…but surely the dream isn’t all there is? We have to wake up at some point, don’t we? Because…because then…”

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