"Look at you, if you don't eat meat now, people in this world will eat you."
This is a mother trying to persuade her daughter who suddenly became a vegetarian.
’s daughter refused to eat meat, then refused to be a human being, and finally wanted to become a pure plant that only needs sunlight and water.
This descriptive and crazy story comes from "The Vegetarian" by Korean writer Han Jiang .
This novel won the Booker Prize, one of the three major international literary awards, in 2016.
is similar to the hit "Kim Ji-young , born in 282" some time ago. This novel also explores women's issues.
However, the styles of the two novels are very different.
The overall atmosphere of "Kim Ji Young in 1982" is depressing yet bright. Jin Zhiying fell ill and received care from his family. With their understanding and companionship, she recovered.
explores the lack of self-worth of women in Korean society through Kim Ji-young's illness in the family.
After reading "The Vegetarian", it gives people a dull and inescapable sense of control.
Yinghui suddenly announced one day that she would never eat meat again.
Everyone around her thought she was sick, but no one cared what she was thinking.
Her husband abandoned her, her brother-in-law took advantage of her, and her parents no longer wanted to care about this "crazy" daughter.
In the end, only her "betrayed" sister Renhui took care of her, but still could not drag her out of the abyss of madness.
The author uses many expressions full of imagery to show the tragic fate of women under the high pressure of Korean patriarchy.
The blood spurting out from sister Yinghui's mouth, isn't it tumbling in sister Renhui's heart?
"If my husband and Yinghui had not broken through the line of defense and everything had not collapsed like a pile of sand, maybe the one who fell would have been me."
Yinghui is the least popular middle child in the family. She has a docile and obedient sister who can help her mother with work, and a younger brother who shoulders the honor of the family and is loved by all.
My father is a veteran. He is domineering and domineering at home.
He was always violent with Yinghui, and Yinghui was beaten on the calf by him until she was eighteen years old.
My mother is a typical housewife, submissive, and her husband's words are bigger than heaven. When her husband treated Yinghui violently, she just watched silently.
When she was a teenager, Yinghui once ran away from home unsuccessfully, which resulted in another violent beating.
Since then, she has learned to hide her emotions and choose to obey like her sister.
went to school and got married step by step according to the arrangements of his family.
The reason why her husband Xiao Zheng chose to marry her was because she "had no special charm."
After Yinghui stopped eating meat and began to behave abnormally, although her husband guessed that it was a mental illness, he would not consider taking her to see a doctor because he had no patience for her.
Even Xiao Zheng thinks there is nothing wrong with this.
"Just think of her as an outsider, no, it would be nice to think of her as my sister who does laundry, cooking, cleaning the house, or a nanny."
During a family gathering, her father used violent methods to force Yinghui to eat meat, and Yinghui stabbed herself with a knife and was sent to the hospital.
As a husband, Xiao Zheng only felt disgusted with her neurotic behavior and could not arouse any sympathy or love.
He didn't even want his wife to be discharged from the hospital, he didn't want to be under the same roof with her.
Yinghui was delirious and could no longer do any housework. Xiao Zheng divorced him ruthlessly.
What’s funny is that Yinghui’s parents, instead of accusing their son-in-law of being ruthless and unjust, actually understand him very well.
Even his father, who had always been stubborn and refused to admit defeat, was full of apologies to his son-in-law Xiao Zheng.
gave birth to a crazy daughter, which made them feel ashamed and could not raise their heads in front of their son-in-law.
A woman who has lost her value can't even compare to a piece of rag.
This is the first story of "Vegetarians", which mainly revolves around Yinghui's relationship with her husband.
Why Yinghui doesn’t eat meat is because she has experienced a terrible dream.
The morning before experiencing the dream, Yinghui was disliked by her husband for making breakfast too slowly.
The faster she thought, the worse things became. She cut her hands in panic.
When her husband ate a small piece of knife teeth in the meat, he looked ferocious and furious, cursing at her.
"I don't know why, but I was not surprised at all at the time, but became more calm and calm, just like a cold hand placed on my forehead. Everything around me was leaving like a tide. Only the chair I sat on and I stayed in an infinite space."
That night, a terrible dream came.
Yinghui's dream revolves around flesh, blood, murder and being killed.
"The short picture rushed towards me intermittently, first the beast's eyes shining, then the flowing blood and the broken skull , and finally the beast's eyes appeared."
Similar dreams appear every day, and Yinghui cannot maintain her five minutes of sleep every day.
The bloody flesh and beast's eyes pounced on Yinghui in the dream.
In reality, what has always suppressed her makes her surrender and obey was the entire social system: her parents, her husband, and her sister who has been taking care of her since then, all under various banners to ask her to obey and endure.
Yinghui is a vegetarian, becomes a weak person, and naturally becomes the prey of the meat eaters. The ending is to be eaten by the meat eaters in this world.
"Since the two sisters were slapped by their irritable fathers when they were young, she developed a sense of responsibility that was similar to maternal love and always took care of her sister."
Both sisters were under the power of their fathers for a long time, but Inhye was "lucky" than Younghye, and she was better at obedience.
She has to replace her mother who works hard all day and takes on a lot of housework, so her father will still be more restrained to her.
"Everything I do as the eldest daughter is not because of precocious maturity, but out of cowardice. It is just a way of survival."
Unlike the silent and obedient sister, In-hui is undoubtedly more charming.
Even the selfish and numb little Zheng is ready to move towards her.
As long as you hear Inhui's voice, Xiao Zheng will have a strange reaction.
Looking at his boring wife and the plump and kind Renhui, Xiao Zheng always lamented the injustice of life:
How great would it be if the two could be swapped!
Like many women, Renhui also completed her studies, got married and had children step by step.
In the eyes of outsiders, Renhui's family is happy and fulfilling.
Renhui runs a cosmetics store. Her husband graduated from the University of Fine Arts and is an artist.
The two have a son, and Inhye successfully spent the most difficult three years of housewife life.
After the child went to kindergarten, she breathed a little relieved and took care of business in the cosmetics store all day long.
Of course, after returning home at night, you have to do housework and take care of your husband and children's diet and daily life.
She also experienced the pain and insomnia that Yinghui had experienced. With her strong will and natural maternal love, she survived.
Yinghui's pain comes from the long-term childhood shadows and the cold physical and mental violence that her husband exerts on him.
And Renhui endured the double betrayal of her sister and her husband.
The relationship between Renhui and her husband is more like living together than a couple.
"Recently, they seem to have formed a gay relationship that is only connected by their children and does not have any other ties."
Renhui's request to him was very simple. She just needed him to spare time on Sunday to help take care of the children so that she could relax.
Although her husband is very grateful for Renhui's efforts, he doesn't want to face her at home.
Because he accidentally heard that Yinghui had a birthmark on her buttocks, he developed strange feelings for his sister-in-law.
Even when he was living as a couple with Renhui, what he thought of was still Yinghui.
Therefore, whenever he sees In-hye, he can think of Ying-hui.
This was the first time he had strong feelings for the opposite sex.
The idea of painting on Yinghui has been bothering him.
He went to Xie Yinghui's house on the pretext of going to her house and told her his plan to paint on her body.
Yinghui agreed.
"This time he used yellow and white to draw a huge flower from her collarbone to her chest. If the back is a flower that blooms at night, then the chest is a flower that blooms at noon. The orange one Forget-me-nots bloomed on her sunken belly, and her thighs were covered with large and small golden petals. "
After he finished the painting, he recorded it with his camera.
This recording directly ignited the long-suppressed desire in his heart.
He proposed to his friend that he also paint flowers and lie naked with Yeong-hye.
The friend did so, but when he further suggested that the two of them should act in a fake role, the friend was so frightened that he ran away.
Yinghui became sexually interested in her friend just because of the flowers on his body.
So, my brother-in-law asked his ex-girlfriend, who was good at painting, to draw flowers for him.
He couldn't wait to arrive at Yinghui's residence and pounced on her before he could even set up the shooting equipment.
This is the main story of Part Two of The Vegetarian.
The protagonist of this story is In-hye's husband. The author repeatedly emphasizes that this is a gloomy and lonely man. All his fine art photography works have the metaphor of "bird".
"Bird" symbolizes freedom, but he has never spread his wings and escaped from the secular society.
I dislike this character very much, even more disgusted with him than Yeong-hye's husband.
knew that his wife was working hard but ignored her. He is rarely at home, and the children even have doubts like "Does our family have a father?"
Yinghui likes the body with flowers all over the body, so he paints flowers all over his body and takes possession of her. This behavior is nothing short of seduction.
After the affair between him and Yinghui was revealed, he did not beg Yinghui for forgiveness, but walked away.
He was not like Yinghui's husband who would swear or beat his wife. He just watched his wife indifferently as she was busy going in and out.
The lethality of cold violence even exceeds the pain inflicted on the body.
The third part unfolds from In Hye’s perspective.
Inhye has always acted as a protector.
"As a daughter, sister, wife, mother and businessman running a store, or even as a pedestrian passing by strangers on the subway, she will try her best to play her role well."
Although her sister did such a scandalous thing that violated human ethics and was abandoned by her family, she still took care of her as always.
Even so, Renhui is still one of Yinghui's perpetrators.
After witnessing the scandal, she made the decision to send her sister to a mental hospital.
It was this decision that completely "ruined" Yinghui.
In the mental hospital, Yinghui refused to eat or drink. She wanted to completely purify herself and become a tree, which is her final destination.
"I was standing upside down in my dream, leaves grew on my body, and roots grew on my palms. I drilled into the ground, constantly and endlessly. My crotch seemed to be blooming, so I split my legs and split them apart."
turned into a tree, which was the most tenacious resistance to the meat eaters.
Looking at my sister's increasingly weak body like a demon, Inhui was also reflecting on herself.
After the scandal of her sister and husband, In-hye developed symptoms of unknown bleeding in her lower body for four months. After inspection, the result was a false alarm.
"She knew she had died a long time ago, but now she is just like a ghost. Life in loneliness is just a scene. The god of death stands beside her, and that face is as familiar as a relative who has met again after many years."
If Yinghui is silently confronting this society in a way that hurts her body, then Renhui is a compromiser.
For the sake of the child - another fragile life, she must persevere.
Because once she chooses to fall down now, she will never have the confidence to stand up again.
All she can do is stop her sister from hurting herself, and then contact her a more expensive mental hospital.
But all this is futile, Yinghui doesn't care whether she will die.
On the way to transfer to the hospital, Inhui thought of her dream about "tree fire".
The author uses the image of "tree" here to convey the awakening of female consciousness: more and more women will gain the ability to awaken themselves.
"She took a breath quietly and stared at the burning trees on the roadside. They were like countless standing beasts, emitting green light. Her eyes were dark and persistent, as if waiting for an answer, no, it was more like expressing protest."
Until the end, Inhye did not "protest" successfully and did not gain the freedom she wanted, because she still had love and responsibility for her family, sister, and son.
But fortunately, her self-awareness began to awaken.
She already knows to live without the expectations of others and no longer live under the eyes of others.
At the same time, her sacrifice spirit of enduring desire is worthy of admiration.
Han Jiang said in his speech at the Booker Literature Awards ceremony:
"What level can human violence reach? How to define reason and madness; to what extent can we understand others. I hope Vegetarian can answer these questions from me. I want to portray a woman who is swearing to join the human group through Vegetarian."
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