Roots

By Kohinoor Dasgupta

When South Korean novelist Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024, international newspaper reports made sure to mention her international bestseller, The Vegetarian, in their reporting.

Its first, Korean-language readers got The Vegetarian in three difficult pieces in 2007. These novelettes became three parts of the novel. The American edition of The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, was published by Hogarth in 2015. Deborah Smith was a co-winner of the International Booker Prize for her translation of The Vegetarian.

When Mr. Cheong’s "ordinary” wife Yeong-hye gives up meat, she stops cooking non-vegetarian food for him as well and draws up a subsistence diet for herself. She does not see why the new arrangement cannot work – after all, Mr. Cheong only has one meal, breakfast, at home during the work week. This is a two-person, two-income family based in Seoul in the mid-2000s. What can go wrong?

Yeong-hye is willing to describe to her husband, and anybody who will listen, the images from an unfolding nightmare which stalk her in the daytime and make her feel like a monster. She feels compelled to purify herself and atone for the pain she has caused to other living creatures. Naturally, she can no longer cook or eat flesh, fish and eggs.

At this stage of her inner turmoil, Yeong-hye is actively trying to cope and carry on existing in her tiny social sphere. She is still able to share a table with people eating non-vegetarian food. However, her husband and others do not appreciate her grit. They feel she is being odd and difficult.

Would it have helped if Yeong-hye had worn a bra under her black blouse when they went to the formal dinner hosted by Mr. Cheong’s boss? Possibly, for the time being. However, she has her reasons for not wearing a bra and often would not even before she became a vegetarian. Had he chosen to navigate a social occasion of this sort with minimum fuss and distress, Mr. Cheong would have asked his wife to pick a suitable outfit. She did listen to him and put on lipstick! The noteworthy point is that Yeong-hye hangs in there. She puts on lipstick and goes out to dinner, and this is several months after she changed her diet.

Unfortunately, Yeong-hye's description of her first nightmare is quite enough for Mr. Cheong. He will not hear more. Nor does it occur to him to take Yeong-hye to a psychiatrist. They were an uncommunicative couple in the best of times. In the worst of times, he does not give up his stoniness and superficiality, although the thought of a divorce has not occurred. The man who is valued at work for finding solutions shows no initiative when it comes to helping his wife to walk out of the woods. He watches her as if she is a movie and not made of flesh and bone, even when she stops covering her upper body at home. It is unclear whether she is still working.

Alone, tormented, keeping a strict watch over her murderous limbs, teeth and claws 24/7 and barely eating, Yeong-hye loses weight steadily. After that business dinner, Mr. Cheong complains to Yeong-hye’s parents, her married elder sister In-hye and her married brother, Yeong-ho ("And what’s more, she’s even imposed this ridiculous diet on me …”).

The family members reach out to Yeong-hye with phone calls. Their coaxing and haranguing have no effect on her. When you finish reading the book, you will look back to this phase and wonder why In-hye did not think of taking her sister to a doctor or a psychiatrist. She knows how to call Emergency Services. Instead, the first time the extended family meets the emaciated Yeong-hye is all together, at In-hye’s new seventeenth-floor apartment, where the lunch table is laden with non-vegetarian goodies. In-hye, that epitome of sanity and good sense, abets her mother’s attempt to feed oysters to Yeong-hye, evoking a shade of bemusement even in our spectator, Mr. Cheong! By the time In-hye tries to stop her father from forcing Yeong-hye to eat meat, it is too late.

We are now almost at the end of the first difficult piece, played by Mr. Cheung.

The never-named video artist who is married to In-hye shapes the course of events in the second difficult piece, titled ‘Mongolian Mark’. This artist is on the verge of creating a new work after a gap of two years. He has been obsessively working on floral panels to paint on human skin, specifically, on the naked body of a person who interests him erotically and has unlocked an edgy creativity, a madness. In his wildest dream, he films this woman and a man, also fully body-painted, in the act of copulation. He works furtively. He understands that on the drawing board his project appears sleazy. Moreover, his choice of female model crosses several lines.

It should be noted that the video artist has worked for ten years on creating 3D images of human beings "worn down by the vicissitudes of late capitalist society". The artist is now aiming to transcend realism. If he succeeds, his images will not titillate. They will, instead, catch the human yearning and capacity for flight and freedom.

Like the video artist, Han Kang too explores how far literature can go without reading like pornography. The interesting thing is, the relentlessly graphic writing here gives a touch of surrealism to the sensuous visuals. More importantly, the words connect the dots between the artist and Yeong-hye. We are given a wide-angle view of their separate tracks heading to the same station. We see in both characters a need for nakedness as well as camouflage. We hear the silence of Yeong-hye's absence from her body. We hear her laugh. We read this lovely sentence:

"As she didn’t eat meat, they chose a place that advertised Buddhist cuisine.”

If only Yeong-hye had received this ordinary consideration from her family in those early days of vegetarianism!

A reader's appraisal of the way ‘Mongolian Mark’ ended, and what it started, is bound to be even sadder than In-hye’s.

Part three, entitled ‘Flaming trees’ reminded me of both Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and of A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oë. I cannot forget the rain-soaked trees and hospital visits of A Personal Matter.

The wide variety of praise for The Vegetarian is proof of the appeal of this novel, which may be interpreted in many ways. Four people struggle to be ordinary, nondescript, chugging along, taking responsibility, bringing up a child, showing up at business dinners, holding down jobs, preparing food, ironing shirts, and so forth. All the while, the beautiful world slips away.

It is not easy for human beings to live as blamelessly as butterflies and trees. Nor is it easy to forget violence witnessed or borne in childhood.