Han Kang’s The Vegetarian was my first experience with a South-Korean writer. The novel won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, and rightfully so. It has far exceeded my expectations.

When seeing a title such as The Vegetarian one might assume that this would be the story of a vegetarian lifestyle. In fact, it is the story of choice, of gender roles, of free will and the lack of it.

Yeong-Hye is introduced to the reader as a typical house-wife, with nothing special to mark her apart until the day she becomes vegetarian, ‘because she had a dream’. So, theoretically, becoming a vegetarian entails giving up meat and, alternatively, all food products which come from animals (eggs, milk, cheese, etc). Would this be a diary of a vegetarian? Something of the type ‘Today I ate rice cake and Kimchi and I feel better than yesterday? Last week I did not use beef in my bibimbap and I felt more energetic than before?’

No. Absolutely not. The Vegetarian is a cry for help. A cry that nobody is willing to hear. It is a story of prejudice, a rebellion against social norms, a fight that Yeong-Hye takes on her own. It is the story of a patriarchal society and of gender inequality. When her family finds out that Yeong-Hye decided to become a vegetarian, they react according to authority norms and social boundaries. Her father and her husband both believe that this choice is an awkward one for the society they live in, her husband seems to silently accept all the changes that his wife is going through, not inquiring about her inner feelings, even when the choice to become a vegetarian transforms itself into a condition named anorexia. Her father, on the other hand, reacts violently and almost forces his daughter to eat meat, bringing forward the argument of authority. She must obey him because he is her father.

After an attempt to commit suicide, Yeong-Hye is admitted into a mental hospital. Her husband egotistically chooses to leave her side and divorce. When she is released, she falls prey to her brother-in-law, who, using the excuse that he wants to involve her in one of his artistic projects, paints her body with flowers and takes advantage of her still decaying mental health to have sex with her.

This episode of her brother-in-law painting her body so that it looks like a huge plant leads Yeong-Hye to believe that she is actually a tree, and therefore she does not need food to survive, being able to live on water and solar energy only. So, from only giving up meat, and later passing into anorexia, Yeong-Hye actually becomes a breatharian. She refuses any sort of food, and destroys herself.

It all started because of a dream. A dream she had. A dream nobody ever really wanted to know more about. A husband who didn’t care, who fled as soon as things got worse, exactly when he should have been there more than ever. A brother-in-law who fed his own obsessions on Yeong-Hye’s disease. A violent father. And caught in between all these, a sister. And the nightmare of a lifetime…

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