The Vegetarian

“She was standing, motionless, in front of the fridge. Her face was submerged in the darkness so I couldn’t make out her expression, but the potential options all filled me with fear.”

As Mr. Cheong contemplates his wife’s strange behavior, he is “filled with fear.” Later references to fear mirror this early moment in the novel, as characters wrestle with how to respond to the strange behaviors of others. Often, as in this moment, the fear is related to the liminal space between waking and dreaming that most often occurs in the middle of the night.

“I had a dream—she’d said that twice now. Beyond the window, in the dark tunnel, her face flitted by—her face, but unfamiliar, as though I were seeing it for the first time.”

Yeong-hye’s frequent dreaming imbues her with a constant fear of meat and blood. The deeper she goes in her efforts to stop the dreams from coming, the more “unfamiliar” she appears to those around her. Later in the novel, it becomes clear that Yeong-hye’s strangeness is connected to her childhood trauma.

“But the fear. My clothes still wet with blood. Hide, hide behind the trees. Crouch down, don’t let anybody see. My bloody hands. My bloody mouth. In the barn, what had I done?”

In one of Yeong-hye’s first narrations of her nightmares, she emphasizes the presence of blood. As she continues to avoid meat as a result, she eventually seems to be trying to empty herself of any animal characteristics. The closer she can be to becoming a tree, the farther she is from the terror she feels in these dreams.