By Bread Alone

On reading Han Kang's The Vegetarian, the pick for South Korea

One of the recurring themes of this project has turned out to be the way that books seem to come to us at the right time, exploring themes that seem timely to what we’re going through at the moment. Maybe it’s just that we bring our own baggage to the table when we set out to read a book, but either way, this seemed unlikely with a book like recent Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. I’m not a vegetarian, for starters. I’ve flirted with it a few times, and I sometimes wish I had the conviction of those who’ve made that decision in response to the cruelty of factory farming, but, alas, I’m writing this with a belly full of breakfast sausage. This is also a book rooted in exploring the patriarchal underpinnings of South Korean society, again not something that seems likely to affect me in a such a profound personal way. Nevertheless, The Vegetarian really touched a nerve with me in a way that it took a bit of rooting around in my psyche to put a finger on.

As you might guess from the title, this is a novel about a young woman, Yeong-hye, who gives up eating meat following a series of dreams about human cruelty. Through the three linked novellas that form the story, Han Kang explores the increasingly violent dire consequences of that seemingly innocuous decision.

At its heart, this is not a novel about the ethical considerations of a vegetarian diet. It barely even explores that aspect of Yeong-hye’s decision at all, instead focusing on the way her personal decision makes nearly everyone in her life go ape shit because they can’t understand it. I know there’s a lot here that isn’t aimed at me, and my experience is wholly different than that of a young Korean woman, so I don’t mean to impose myself onto a book that is, at least in part, a response to the patriarchal nature of South Korean society. But Han Kang herself has said in interviews that she hopes audiences around the globe find some personal and universal meaning beyond just the examination of her society, and that’s exactly what this project is all about, so I feel somewhat justified in relating to the story.

The whole time I was reading (actually, listening to, since I did this one via audiobook) this novel, I found myself having a visceral reaction to it. It took me a while to figure out exactly why. Eventually it dawned on me that Yeong-hye’s experience after announcing that she’d given up meat, which is greeted by confusion, consternation, and unsolicited advice by everyone around her, mirrored for me the experience of turning away from religion. When you live in the Bible Belt and choose to separate yourself from the mindset that those around you take for granted, you deal with a lot of the same things Yeong-hye deals with. I can’t say that my own experiences have ever spiraled into the depravity and violence that marks Yeong-hye’s ordeal, but I was struck by the psychological similarities, especially the way that most of those in her life mostly just refuse to accept her decision.

I don’t want to paint too dire a picture of my upbringing here—church was, for the most part, a pretty positive experience in my childhood. As I got a little older, though, I had questions that blind faith just couldn’t answer. By the time I was a teenager, I felt like I had to fight and claw my way out of the shackles of a religious mindset that I found increasingly nonsensical. Though my immediate family never spurned me for it, it absolutely did damage relationships with many people along the way. For much of my young adulthood, I was angry about it, but, while I still get annoyed with attempts to impose Christian symbols and ideals on public life, I’ve softened somewhat. I understand why some people need the reassurances of religion, and I try not to begrudge them that comfort as long as they let me and anyone else who doesn’t share their worldview be.

All this has been on my mind a lot lately. That’s partly because of the rise of Christian Nationalism in the Trump era, which chills me to the bone. But there’s also a reason that’s a lot closer to home. Recently I’ve had to tackle an aspect of parenting I’ve been dreading for a long time—having The Talk with my son. The Talk I’m referring to probably isn’t the one you’re thinking about. I’m actually pretty comfortable talking about the birds and the bees. We’ve mostly let his Health classes at school cover the mechanics of what goes where, and instead tried to foster age-appropriate conversations about sexuality, focusing on how what he hears from his friends is probably bullshit and that anything he sees on the internet is unlikely to be a healthy representation of real life. The Talk I’m referring to here is a way more difficult one, at least for me. At twelve years old, my son has discovered religion, and while’s he’s thus far been understandably weirded out and reluctant to discuss anything related to sexuality, when it comes to God, he’s turned into a real chatterbox.

A couple months back, in my post on reading The Hobbit, I lamented the difficulty of fostering his desire to read. Recently he has started reading on his own accord, but it’s taken a form I hadn’t exactly anticipated—he’s started reading The Bible. One day last week, I saw a copy of The King James Bible on his nightstand. As someone who grew up in a devout Southern Baptist family but turned away from the church for all the usual reasons at a relatively early age, I was curious and a little bit nervous about where this was coming from. I asked him about it, trying hard to remain as neutral as possible, because it’s important to me that he feels free to explore ideas and belief systems on his own terms without me imposing my own views on him. I noted that reading such a huge and challenging book was a difficult undertaking, hoping to start a conversation. He’d started in the logical place—the beginning—and had found Genesis somewhat impenetrable. So, like a true native of the digital age, he’d looked up a YouTube video on how to read the Bible, and, following the advice there, he’d started with Gospels, which he found easier going but was still somewhat flummoxed by the ornate language of the King James. We talked about different translations, the layout of the Old and New Testaments, the pitfalls of literal interpretations of ancient spiritual texts, about mythology and dogma.

In the days since, we’ve had several good talks about it. His curiosity about spiritual matters stems from the place that it does with most people: a growing awareness of human mortality. He said he didn’t want to be a “slave to any particular religion” —his words—but that he was beginning to crave some kind of reassurance that there was something waiting after we die. That’s understandable. I’ve come to find comfort in the idea that death is most likely an end to the self, a non-existence as total as what we experienced—or, I suppose, didn’t experience—before we were born. I think any speculation on what happens to us after death is just that, pure speculation, born solely of wishful thinking and totally without a shred of empirical evidence. But that’s a lot for a kid to process, and, in the end, I don’t pretend to have the answer to that age-old question, so why not let him explore his own beliefs?

I suspect that his new-found interest in Christianity comes from another place as well. Like anywhere in the Bible Belt, you can hardly go outside without someone asking you where you go to church. He’s never had an answer for that question, and I know well firsthand how isolating it can feel to find yourself on the outside of something so many take for granted. Whatever is driving it, it strikes me that he’s living my experience in reverse. My son is coming at this from the other side of the mirror. Though I’ve tried hard to avoid imposing my own secular worldview on him, of course he’s soaked it up. I guess it’s only natural he’s curious about exploring other paths.

He’s a smart kid, and a thoughtful one, amazingly emotionally mature for his age, and it’s interesting to watch him wrestle with this stuff. For what it’s worth, I’m doing my best to answer his questions about my own views and about what Christians believe honestly. But I’m also parsing my answers, trying to avoid maxims or sweeping pronouncements and letting him connect the dots the way he sees fit. My only hope is that making those connections becomes for him a lifelong process, that he doesn’t latch on to one way of looking at the world at a young age. That’s something we would all do well to strive for I guess, if we really want to live the life of the mind.

I’m grateful to The Vegetarian for helping me sort through some of this stuff. And for being another reminder why it’s important to read widely and look for both the personal and the universal in the human stories we encounter. The novel is rich enough to support this and a lot of other readings, and it’s easy to see why Han Kang was awarded a Nobel for her literary endeavors.

Now with more red.

So what’s up next? I’ve got a few books going at the moment. The first isn’t something for this project, but a sort of palette cleanser. A manga version of The Count of Monte Christo caught my eye on a recent trip to the library with my son. I’ve always wanted to read the novel, but I’ve slotted another 1500 page behemoth, Les Miserables, for France, so I don’t think the time will be right for a while. The manga version, which is part of a series of classics retold in Manga form) is pretty engrossing. I don’t have much experience with Manga, but I caught on pretty quickly to the back-to-front reading, and I’m tearing through this one, which, as a rip-roaring adventure story, is a good swerve away from the heavy nature of my recent reading.

I’ve got two books going for Bookmark Planet as well. My commutes to and from work are currently being made tolerable by Nnedi Okorafor’s Noor, an African Futurism sci-fi novel that almost feels like cheating as the pick for Nigeria because Okorafor is one of my favorite contemporary writers and I’ve read so much of her stuff. I’m also reading my pick for India, a return to the detective novel, which has been another recurring theme of this project, in the form of Harini Nagendra’s The Bangalore Detective’s Club. Looking down the road, I’ll soon start reading Jean Rhys’ The Wide Sargasso Sea, which is the reason it’s been so long since I wrote anything for this project, as I recently spent 24 full hours engrossed in Jane Eyre, to which Sargasso is a prequel, via audiobook in preparation for reading it as the pick for Dominica.

As always, I’m game for suggestions if you have them for any place I haven’t yet visited. Until then, keep reading.