The Role Of Violence In The Novel The Vegetarian, By Han Kang

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Around the world, humans like to believe that we live in a world that is violent free. However, this is not the case. In many societies, women are victims of violence and do not come forward about their experience. When people don’t come forward about experiences like this, it can lead to mental illnesses in the future. In the book, The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, this issue is present. The main character, Yeong-hye, faces verbal, physical and sexual violence throughout her entire life. She keeps her experience to herself and her experiences affect her dreams at night, in which, she has a vision of becoming a vegan. Due to the verbal, physical and sexual violence that Yeong-hye experiences in her life, her experiences affect her mental stability …show more content…

The first type of violence that Yeong-hye experiences is verbal abuse. In early scenes of the book, Yeong-hye gets verbally abused by her husband. Her husband may only seem to be yelling at her, but verbal abuse takes many forms such as, harsh language and easy irritation, judging, criticizing and giving commands. For example, after Yeong-hye initially has her dream where she decides to become a vegan, she chooses to get rid of all the meat in the house. Her husband, Mr. Cheong, sees her bagging all the meat and gets easily irritated and uses harsh language around her, “There was a rustling sound, my wife was busy putting things around her one by one into black rubbish bags. Eventually I lost control. ‘What the hell are you up to now?’ I shouted” (17). Mr. Cheong took what was a calm situation and responded in a way that made it a more intense situation. He made this situation more intense through the use of the word ‘hell’ and his …show more content…

In the two incidents that Yeong-hye is sexually abused in this book, she is raped. The first time she was raped, she was raped by her own husband since Yeong-hye kept telling her husband that she didn’t want to have sex with him. Her husband was, “Pinning down her struggling arms and tugging off her trousers….As soon as I finished, she rolled over and buried her face in the quilt” (38). Mr. Cheong had so much power over his wife that he didn’t care how much she was struggling to become free from his grasp. He also didn’t bother to take notice that he was having sex with her against her own will. Mr. Cheong is not the only man who happens to take an advantage of Yeong-hye. Yeong-hye’s sister’s husband also took an advantage of her. Her sister’s husband was working with Yeong-hye on a film piece when he decided to have sex with her. Their time together was described as, “In their final minutes of sex she gnashed her teeth, screamed rough and shrill, spat out a panting ‘stop’ and then, at the end, she cried again” (121). Just like the first time she was taken advantage of she was not emotionally well by the end. After the first time she had, ‘buried her face in the quilt’ and the second time she was crying, signs of her breaking down

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