The Vegetarian

Yeong-hye’s decision to become vegetarian creates a series of conflicts, with meat at the center. Each of her family members desperately attempts to get her to eat meat, with no success. Yeong-hye connects the idea of meat with the human body and with negative childhood experiences. Early on, she begins refusing sex with her husband, telling him that his “body smells of meat” (24). Her conflation of animal meat and the human body is continued as she tries to escape her corporeal self by not eating. One of her traumatic childhood memories involves eating an “entire bowlful” (49) of dog meat after her father murders the animal for biting her. Yeong-hye seems to be trying to reverse the effects of her negative actions, feeling that the “lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there” (56), and she is responsible for getting them out of her body. As she seeks to become less and less human, she refuses to even be in the same room as meat. Yeong-hye’s descent into asceticism is directly produced by her desire to heal herself of her earlier habits as a meat-eater.