The Vegetarian By Han Kang – Book Review

The Vegetarian By Han Kang – Book Review

Review By Harsimran Kaur | Rating: 5/5

A mind is wholesome not just through the external stimuli but also by internal pleasure of conflict wretched in the memory of the forlorn. If such a mind is disreputable and delirious, it also stands as an impeccable canvas of reflective prejudices cascading as a disillusioned reality. What is this mind of Yeong-hye in the book, ‘The Vegetarian’, belying to many, invoked by extreme subservience and impenitence, regaling in the promiscuity and acting morally defunct?

  • Is it a mind so perilous, so distraught yet unbound by the texture of familiarity?
  • Is it a mind under the cage of disheveled thoughts, yet living the exuberance of an inchoate existence?
  • Is it a mind so imperfect, as it is to be believed, yet consciously driven to self-exculpation?

The mind after all has to start with something to prove its dominion, and so begins Yeong-hye’s mind to turn into a vegetarian after she has a putrid dream of the squeamish blood flowing in crimson. What did the dream do to her? Is it an affinity to the airy fairy that detonates the mind to be a nudge? Or did the dream make her believe at loss of existential yearning or acted as a poniard cutting the flesh minced in the aggression of blood dehisce finally turning into a ‘meat disgust’? Yeong-hye thus becomes the persona non grata!

Tantalizing with an unbreakable inertia, and opening up of complex physicality breeding on an unrefined past parquet, ‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang explores the story in three segments.

PART 1—Yeong-hye turns vegetarian and gradually becomes a silent percussion inconspicuously re-defining a new musical note that leaves her parents, her sister and her husband sullen and shaken. Her nakedness is a dilemma to many but when the Sun swallows her naked body; to her it feels like a panicle awkwardly branching out the parietal aroma living in disguise. She is force-fed but all in vain. Her husband leaves her alone; she now deceives life, hanging on to death in perpetuity of survival.

PART 2—Yeong-hye is now dressed in a floral pattern enjoined blissfully revealing the ambiguity of life; sometimes restrained and often pouring out the reflex petals rejoicing the soul contract with the animistic dwellings. She is being painted naked by her brother-in-law. She gives in because to her nakedness is not a responsibility. It is a conclusive redemption from eccentricities. It is opening up to carefree existence, surrendering to imperfect simulacrum of moral rectitude. Found in fragrant delictoby her sister, she now finds herself imprisoned in a psychiatric ward.

PART 3—Yeong-hye stands with the head buried to the coarse ground with legs swinging in the air; the torso is tight like a tree trunk separating the legs laterally. She desires to be the ‘tree’ with branches split out. In-hye is awkward to see her sister in a dilapidated condition. Past lurks like a faded moon, the disgust of seeing Yeong-hye with her husband together is rust spread like long-dried blood stains. Can we ever explain traumas; their depth and their incumbent to be an incessant baggage? Can we ever hold moments slipping by, control them and twist the ulterior motive? If we could, we would never face ‘death’. But we all need to as it’s the beginning of a new purpose. Yeong-hye too wishes to die. Is it fear? NO! But, she wishes to swim gracefully through the perpetuity of existential prolapse. Her mental illness is bereavement by the world; a devilish illusion to the people around her but she flows in it like the distinguished scales of the fish resign to the water currents.

‘The Vegetarian’ is a profound reflection of one’s insanity, the exuberance to live with it and the artistry to redefine the indiscernible through an erratic mind; a mind that knows no boundaries and is an actor manqué.

TAKE AWAY

Sensual and saturnine!

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