✎ Personal Review

Yeong-hye: The woman we never fully understand

Yeong-hye’s decision to stop eating meat sets off a chain of increasingly disturbing events. Her family responds with control, anger, and attempts to force her back into what they consider normal. What troubled me most was how quickly concern for her well-being became a justification for controlling her body.

The book also touches on how childhood trauma follows us into adulthood, shaping our relationships, our sense of safety, and our ability to live comfortably in the world.

However, I wished Han Kang had explored Yeong-hye’s psychological journey more deeply. We get glimpses of her traumatic past, but much of the connection between those experiences and her transformation is left to the reader’s interpretation. I appreciate ambiguity in literature, but here I sometimes felt I was interpreting Yeong-hye from a distance rather than truly understanding her.

In-hye: The sister who keeps surviving

Surprisingly, it was In-hye who stayed with me the most.

While Yeong-hye’s suffering becomes impossible for everyone to ignore, In-hye continues to function. She works, raises her son, fulfils her responsibilities, and tries to hold things together. Her ability to keep going can easily be mistaken for strength. But the final chapter reveals the emotional cost of being the person who never gets to fall apart.

In-hye, too, has been shaped by childhood violence and years of suppressing her own needs. She is trying to care for another wounded person while slowly confronting her own wounds.

Her helplessness in trying to save Yeong-hye is particularly heartbreaking. You can love someone, recognise their suffering, and desperately want to protect them — and still be unable to change what is happening. When those efforts fail, guilt can follow: what could I have done differently, and did I fail to protect them?

The ending and what stayed with me

The final chapter changed how I saw In-hye. When she resists the medical staff’s attempts to control Yeong-hye, I felt that she was beginning to understand her sister differently — not necessarily to agree with her, but to question the world that had made her suffering so difficult to escape.

The trees outside the ambulance reinforce this uncertainty. Yeong-hye imagines an existence free from human violence, while In-hye remains caught between keeping her sister alive and questioning the world they inhabit. There is no neat resolution. In-hye cannot simply save her sister, and understanding does not magically undo years of pain.

Perhaps that is what makes the ending so unsettling. Sometimes, understanding begins when we stop assuming another person’s suffering can be explained away, corrected, or made acceptable to everyone else.

Final thoughts

I admired the novel’s symbolism and its exploration of trauma, control, and survival. But I wanted more psychological depth in Yeong-hye’s character, particularly in how her childhood experiences shaped her eventual transformation.

For me, In-hye’s inner conflict was more emotionally accessible than Yeong-hye’s. Her story revealed the quieter suffering of someone who continues to fulfil every expectation while carrying wounds of her own.

The Vegetarian raises difficult questions about how we treat people who suffer differently from us, how childhood experiences shape adulthood, and whether love is enough to save someone.

I appreciated the book more than I loved it.