Han Kang’s The Vegetarian: A Review

Author Han Kang | Photo source: Wiki Media Commons

For the first time, a South Korean author, Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize In Literature in 2024 “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. Staying true to her concern for “the fragility of human life”, Kang refused to address a press conference celebrating her achievement, alluding to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and war in Ukraine. The Nobel Laureate’s refusal to celebrate reminds us all of the collective responsibility we bear of not remaining silent in the face of oppression and suffering. 

The destruction and trauma inflicted from Sudan and Congo to Palestine and Kashmir, remains one of the biggest litmus tests to our humanity. Kang’s stance is a reminder that none of us exist in a vacuum and that no space is above discussions of the politics of violence unfolding globally. In the novel, The Vegetarian,  she makes subtle references to the Gwangju uprising of the 80s (in which civilians demonstrating peacefully were brutally suppressed by the Korean military) and writes from the perspective of a survivor of the massacre in another novel, Human Acts. 

Kang encountered images of violence at a young age. Questions of cruelty and the human capacity to endure and propagate violence colours her work Her literature is, in my opinion, an acute study of human behaviour, carefully cataloguing the subtleties of violence and the oddness of things we deem “natural”. These complex contradictions are best captured in the Man Booker Prize-winning (2016) novel, The Vegetarian. 

Slippery, unusual and disturbing, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian pulls at strings of violence, sanity, and nature to weave together a complex portrait of the human condition. Narrated in three parts from the perspective of different characters– the protagonist’s husband, brother-in-law and sister–  the story revolves around a woman, Yeon-hye’s sudden aversion to meat and her increasingly erratic behaviour. Through the gory dreams that inspire a change in her diet and three different viewpoints, I attempt to understand her behaviour and am confronted with a fundamental question about human nature– Can one ever truly know a person? 

Part one begins with Mr. Cheong’s description of his “unremarkable” wife, Yeon-hye. He details his carefully planned path of mediocrity, from choosing an unremarkable college and career to an unremarkable wife. His risk averse plans instil a mundaneness and familiarity, creating a growing tension in the text of an upcoming event. His wife standing in the kitchen at dawn, staring like a ghost into the refrigerator light and telling him, “I had a dream,” breaks the mundane, inviting a certain unfamiliarity into the text. She responds neither to his questions nor to his touch, seeming in a state of shock yet showing no emotion at all. It is in these instances of contradiction and a lack of speech that Kang details the failure of language to explain the complexity of human behaviour. She retreats to the bed, her husband follows and the conversation ends there. Why did he not inquire about her dream? Mr. Cheong’s lack of interest seems to stem from his complete disinterest in viewing his wife as a person- Kang stunningly captures the callousness of a man who simply does not know his wife, and moreover, has absolutely no intention to do so. 

The next morning, he curses his wife for not waking him up on time and making him breakfast as she remains in the same dazed state. The simple description of indifferent behaviour paints a brilliant and tragic picture of reality— a man’s complete inability to view his wife as a human being, let alone an equal. It is these scenes that linger in my mind most as a reader, where minimal behavioural observations reveal a silent and acceptable male entitlement running through the house, creating a discreet violence.  

Kang introduces the idea of inexpressibility as the protagonist’s actions grow from bizarre to self-destructive and result in her hospitalisation. Yeon-hye’s demeanour remains eerily composed and almost “expressionless”, leaving both characters and readers to scramble for reasons explaining why. The why in this novel remains a central theme yet eludes easy explanation. Why does Yeon-hye hurt herself? Why does she give up meat? Gory dreams of pools of blood offer some insight into her change in behaviour but create more questions than answers: What is the origin of these dreams? We don’t know. This sense of “unknowability” pervades the entire plot, making the book hard to put down but also leaving readers to wrestle with the implications of the unsaid. Kang’s almost clinical description of human behaviour mixes the personal with the social, speaking of the patriarchy, violence, mental illness and moral ambiguity without ever really speaking at all. 

Yeon-hye speaks in “the quiet tone of a person who didn’t belong anywhere, someone who had passed into a border area between states of being” in the second part. Kang creates a world of quiet mental deterioration, where the character withdraws and practically severs ties from the world. How does the world react to this withdrawal, often misinterpreted as passivity? Often, unfortunately,  in an exploitative and violent manner. Her brother-in-law exerts a quiet kind of violence, resorting to fetishising her behaviour and taking advantage of her descent into “abnormal” ways of being. The why of her dreams brings some questions to my mind:  Why do paintings of flowers appeal to her? Why does she find joy in nature, to the point of arousal? Yeon-hye’s increasingly fragile mental state intertwines with her growing fascination for nature and through the course of the book, she seems to be attempting to become one with nature itself, from roaming naked to spending hours basking in the sunlight. 

The inner workings of Yeon-hye’s mind evade simple explanations, mirroring nature. Like nature itself, her demeanour is neither happy nor sad and the very concept of being is distorted by her illness. Her inexpressibility reflects the inexpressibility of nature. The author’s ability to coalesce the interiority of the body with the violence of the familial, all against a tussle between familiarity and unfamiliarity is breathtaking– Kang thrives in the “in-between”. While the floaty mess of the unspoken can (and does) frustrate most readers, it is where Kang surveys human behaviour with the most depth. 

Her writing style is a contradiction in itself- no-frills prose expressing ideas almost beyond articulation. These contradictions also make their way into the plot and leads me to question – could Yeon-hye’s reverting to a “natural” state be due to struggles with the “performance” of being human? Could it be an attempt to feel a sense of agency over one’s body after being subjected to intense violence? What could have caused this transition? The why evades us yet again. 

But Kang is not concerned with the why. Although her self-aware, bare bones writing prompts several questions, she pulls the reader back to reinforce the irrationality that characterises human behaviour. In a novel filled with uncertainty, ambiguity and complete collapse of a sense of normalcy, one constant reveals itself in the form of love. In-hye visits her sister in a psychiatric facility, caring for her despite her complete lack of response and detachment from “human” ways of being. Her repeated attempts to communicate with her, from bringing food she liked when they were children to pulling her away from doctors trying to feed her with intravenous injections, reveal a degree of care. This care is as irrational as every other human emotion chronicled by Kang, being showered ceaselessly on Yeon-hye despite no signs of improvement. 

Perhaps this is the human reaction to dealing with the “unknowability” of mental illness: to crawl back to the familiar; and there is nothing more familiar to humans than love. By refusing to offer clear explanations of Yeon-hye’s behaviour, The Vegetarian proposes an approach of radical acceptance, stemming from connection, care and hope.

(Edited by Teista Dwivedi, Giya Sood and Srijana Siri)