IAMT #16: A Brief Note on Han Kang's "The Vegetarian"

the fallacy of "do no harm"

Before reading “The Vegetarian”, I had watched as it ascended to fame, fresh off of a Nobel Prize win. I caught a glimpse of a few messages tossed around, stereotyping the book as a message on the overwhelming patriarchy in Neo-Confucian Korea, vegetarianism in counterculture, the line between mental illness and not, etc.

After reading, my main takeaway was not any of these. Although they exist in there, in some capacity, the major theme I walked away with is one that makes you question the feasibility of the commonly known mantra: “do no harm”.

TW + Spoilers ahead.

The book is split into three parts, each part shifting the perspective and moving forward chronologically.

“Part 1: The Vegetarian” depicts Yeong-hye before she becomes a vegetarian, as well as her initial journey into it. It’s told from the perspective of her husband, but simply put:

Yeong-hye becomes vegetarian while doing her best to minimize the effects on anyone else → husband goes apeshit for no good reason and makes himself to be the victim

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“Part 2: The Mongolian Mark” is told from the perspective of Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law and begins shortly after Yeong-hye and her husband have divorced. Yeong-hye begins to cross a blurred line of mentally instability; one action will reveal that she can remain autonomous, then the next is more akin to self-destruction.

Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law is not much better than her husband but finds himself curious with Yeong-hye, sexualizing her and creating an elaborate ploy which leads to the climax of the chapter in which they have sex (and he arguably rapes/takes advantage of a mentally ill person).

This leads to the brother-in-law’s suicide attempt and eventual divorce with In-hye, Yeong-hye’s sister, a wife who had provided him everything.

Yeong-hye did nothing to provoke her brother-in-law, but his curiosity with her and his “artistic pursuits” drove him to ruin multiple lives, including his own. Yeong-hye comes out of the experience seemingly unfettered, which really makes us question her sanity.

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Part 3: “Flaming Trees” is told from Yeong-hye’s sister, In-hye’s, perspective. After In-hye divorces her husband preceding part 3, we’re shown how difficult her life has been since. A single mother running a business, all the while trying to stay accountable for Yeong-hye, who has now been admitted into a mental facility. In-hye is shown to live her life as a survivor; she shifts as many burdens onto herself while necessitating little support from others.

Barely speaking, starving herself to the point of malnutrition, acts of violence against the hospital staff, and vividly deranged desires of becoming a tree/one with nature solidify our belief that Yeong-hye is now unquestionably mentally unstable.

In-hye spends much of her time looking after Yeong-hye who is reaching a critical point. Her health is worsening rapidly and she is physically resisting any sort of treatment, seemingly hoping to die. In the climax of the final chapter, the hospital staff are trying to restrain Yeong-hye when In-hye, feeling sympathetic for her sister, bites one of the staff in the process of stopping forced treatment on Yeong-hye.

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“The Vegetarian” helps you examine the lengths of your moral scale.

In part 1, it’s a no-brainer that resisting someone’s benign journey into vegetarianism is ridiculous, no matter how obscure their reason for it.

Part 2 shows that trying to be invisible and interacting as little as possible, you can unknowingly be forced into a situation with devastating consequences by other people.

And finally, part 3 shows how someone we’ve previously deemed innocent (Yeong-hye) to some can inflict suffering to others in the same action. In-hye is the golden star example of a diligent life lived but her unwillingness to abandon her sister, a trait most would acknowledge as honorable, results in her anguish as well as her physically attacking someone in defense of Yeong-hye.

All this to say, what?

We’re born into this world unconsentingly and put into a never-ending cycle of cause and effect with those around us. To think we can “do no harm” by removing ourselves from some sort of societal expectation or social contract is a lofty ideal at best.

Through Yeong-hye, we see that her desire to become one with nature and disappear in act three seems reasonable at first but is ultimately a selfish one - arguably equal to that of her husband’s desire to control Yeong-hye in act one.

Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” asks us to be cognizant of our own existence - we should remain humble in our understanding of how someone will be the collateral of our choices, while consciously accepting how the unreasonable decisions of others will inevitably reach us.

Thanks for reading.

EN: Wanted to write something short about this book, but not too happy with how it turned out. The book has a lot of depth, but this was by far my favorite theme from it.