I've completed Nobel Prize winner Han Kang's "The Vegetarian", and I found it quite shocking. Actually, when I first met the writer, it was through Greek lessons, which I didn't appreciate as much. It felt like it was too much focusing on sensations, and in the end, it seemed like all she was spending ages describing was how the protagonist wets her lips with the tip of her tongue. The Vegetarian, on the contrary, was the perfect union of narration and description. After finishing it, my mind went straight to a movie I had come across not long before. The movie was French, and it was called "humanist vampire seeking consensual suicidal person". Immediately, I was intrigued by the oxymoron: how can a vampire be a humanist? In any universe I can think of, a vampire needs human blood to survive. Therefore, killing is almost implied (except maybe for my girl, Draculaura). I researched it a bit before watching it, and I found it a cute little movie about a cute little teenage vampire. I loved it from the start! But what could a vegetarian and a humanist vampire have in common?
THE VEGETARIAN: A WELL-BALANCED DIET
To Han Kang's readers, whether affectionate or casual readers who came to know her after the Nobel Prize, it is quite clear that a vegetarian lifestyle has nothing to do with this book. Yeong-hye's announcement that she will quit eating meat is only the first step towards a spiralling path. It is announced in quite a way, as her husband finds her one morning lying on the floor near the fridge. She had taken all the types of meat she had stored in there and surrounded herself with it, almost resembling a grave with its offerings, all because she had a dream. To me, the distortion of the oniric trope is quite clear- usually, dreams bring predictions in literature, and they are often a device for foreshadowing. On the contrary, Yeong-hye's dreams have no direct meaning and are rather a product of impressions, much like in reality. In her case, they tend to be the representation of a severely ill subconscious overwhelming her slowly. The cause of this is revealed rather casually in a conversation: "A well-balanced diet is a sign of a well-balanced mind". Such a banality is the book's starting point. In his studies on childhood and sexuality, Freud states that the child discovers the world through hsìis mouth. Yeong-hye's refusal of meat is a refusal to live life. I found the distortion of a cliché an exquisitely horrific way to portray a difficult reality. I admired the realism of it, as it had a mimetic capacity. Her diet change is only the start of her mental health deteriorating: she stops wearing clothes, runs in the forest and stands in the rain, until she reveals to her sister that she wants to become a plant.
THE HUMANIST VAMPIRE: TO DRINK OR NOT TO DRINK?
This story is about Sasha, a cute little vampire who could never survive in the wild, just like my cat. As we are talking about vampires, it is important to clarify the universe of the story. In this one, vampires need to prey on human blood or they'll starve. In doing so, killing is necessary as if the human's blood is not drained completely, they will become a vampire and eventually be forced to join the community for hunting mates. Our protagonist can't seem to fit into this scheme; she is against killing humans, allegedly because of a traumatic experience she had when she was little. Her family killed a clown they had engaged for her birthday, whom she liked very much. In order to understand this, trauma is to be intended in a much broader sense. Different from Han Kang's book, Humanist Vampire has no direct ties with Freudian psychology. Trauma is a technical term in pathological psychology. Its use in literal analysis risks misunderstanding and simplification, as trauma is not a specific experience for a pathological being but more like a universal experience in life. Sasha saw the brutal slaughter of a human, as probably every other vampire before her did- the ritualistic aspects of it are implied. The problem is how she can't overcome the trauma deriving from what she needs to do in order to stay alive. She is incapable of surviving in the world; in this, she is deprived of animal instincts, just like the vegetarian who would rather switch kingdoms and be a plant, yielding for a passive life cycle. The inability to process life has characterised the modern man in literature ever since Hamlet was written.
THE OTHERS
The Vegetarian is narrated in first person through the three who have been most affected by Yong-hye's illness. Yeong-hye's sister, In-hye, is the last narrator. At one point, she wonders if she should continuepayimg for her sister's care as she was abandoned by everyone, including their parents. The doctors are tired of In-hye trying to "talk her sister out" of schizophrenia, and she knows how delusional she is. Sasha's parents are wondering whether or not they can hunt for her as well. They try every approach, including not feeding her, but she ends up almost starved. In a moment of crisis, she tries eating human snacks, which are implied to be poisonous for vampires. Humanist Vampire ends with her vision coming true: only drinking ethically sourced blood, which she collects with her faithful friend, whom she luckily spared. The happy ending makes it quite different from the Vegetarian's open ending, though not entirely. Despite the writer's effort to represent In-hye on the very edge, it is implied that she will continue taking care of her sister and her own kid, always trying to be the best she can.
A MATTER OF CHOICE
So what is left of it, both in the book and the movie, is a choice. The other characters in the Vegetarian spiral with her, but in the end, what they make is a consensual choice. Not a choice between good and evil but a choice between life and death, nothing and something. At one point the reader questions, especially hearing her sister's thoughts- whether or not they should stop pressing her to become more normal as in the end it is quite like a choice, quite like the choice of being vegetarian. The point is how the choice one makes can affect others. At the end of the day, both a weak vampire and a schizophrenic vegetarian narrate a story of how difference is among us, and we should make an effort to present how common it can be.
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