The Vegetarian

The second part of the novel is written from the perspective of Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, who is never named in the novel. He is watching a dance performance that he had chosen to attend because of the provocative posters depicting men and women who were painted “from the napes of their necks right down to their bottoms with flowers” (63). He is stunned that “the image that had possessed him for almost a year now had also been dreamed up by someone else” (64) and leaves the performance feeling unhappy with the director’s choices. After the show, he takes the train and ponders his reflection in the glass, which shows a “middle-aged man” (65) of average looks. 

Instead of going home, he goes to his art studio, which he shares with three other artists. He takes out his sketches and the master tape that contains the originals of his video art pieces. As he looks through his sketches, he thinks more about the bodies of the dancers that he has imagined in his drawings. The image, which deviates from his traditional style, came to him by chance when his wife commented on their son’s Mongolian mark and casually mentioned that Yeong-hye may still have hers as well: “just a thumb-sized thing, blue” (67). Since that moment, the brother-in-law has been obsessed with this “image of a blue flower on a woman’s buttocks, its petals opening outward,” which becomes “inexplicably bound up with the image of men and women having sex, their naked bodies completely covered with painted flowers” (67). Upon examining his sketches more closely, he realizes that the woman in his drawings is his sister-in-law, Yeong-hye, and that the man engaged in sexual intercourse with her is himself. When he arrives “at this conclusion, he grimace[s]” (68). 

He begins considering making the kind of video that his drawing depicts. He wrestles with the idea of Yeong-hye as the woman in the video but cannot bring himself to believe that such an act would be possible. As he struggles with the question of whether he is a “moral human being” (69), one of his studio mates, J, comes into the room and offers to buy coffee. The brother-in-law rushes to clean his things up and leaves the studio after looking at his reflection, fighting the urge to “spit at those red, lined eyes” and “smash his ugly lips” (70). 

When the brother-in-law returns home, he sees how exhausted his wife, In-hye, is. She has been working full-time to support their family, as well as running their household and taking care of their son. The brother-in-law examines his wife’s “exhausted-looking face the way one might look at a complete stranger” and remembers his early feelings of being “vaguely dissatisfied” (71) with In-hye. It was only when he met Yeong-hye “that he realized what it was his new wife was missing” (71). In-hye tells her husband that she’s worried about Yeong-hye, who was served divorce papers earlier that week. The brother-in-law offers to visit Yeong-hye, then goes into the bathroom, “aware that he hadn’t had sex with his wife for close on two months” (73) and begins picturing Yeong-hye; he masturbates to the image. 

Before going to Yeong-hye’s apartment the next day, he reminisces about the day she cut her wrists, about two years prior, when he carried her out of the house and took her to the hospital. After the self-harm event, Yeong-hye lived with him and In-hye. While she stayed there, he thought that “it was difficult to believe that such a woman had once tried to kill herself” (77) and that the only unusual thing about her is that she is vegetarian.

Just before he arrives at Yeong-hye’s apartment, he describes the shift in his feelings toward her after hearing about her Mongolian mark. Previously, “he’d never had any kind of ulterior motive” when interacting with Yeong-hye, but now, “sexual desire” (79) floods through him when he thinks about her. 

Shortly after the he arrives at Yeong-hye’s apartment, she comes out of the bathroom naked. When she realizes that he is there, she calmly gets dressed, “not in the least flustered or embarrassed” (81). He regrets not looking to see her Mongolian mark while she was naked. They have a brief conversation about her life, and he proposes that Yeong-hye could work at In-hye’s cosmetics store, but instead of responding, she offers him some sliced pear. He feels a “sudden urge” (84) to be sexually intimate with Yeong-hye.

He convinces Yeong-hye to leave the house to go on a walk. He buys her a shaved ice and watches her eat it, feeling that every time her tongue moves, he flinches “as though from an electric shock” (85). While she eats, he tells Yeong-hye that he’d like her to model naked for him and allow him to paint flowers on her body. She agrees, and he explains that she must keep this a secret from In-hye. She is silent and gives “no sign of assent, but none of refusal either” (86). 

He begins setting up at his friend, M’s, art studio, which is filled with M’s more conventional artwork. M is a full-time university professor, and though the brother-in-law is slightly envious of M’s success, the brother-in-law also believes that the paintings are “far more conventional than anything he would put his name to” (87). The brother-in-law is happy with the sunlight coming in through the windows and begins setting up his materials. 

Yeong-hye arrives at M’s studio for the modeling session wearing a plain sweater and jeans. The brother-in-law asks her to get undressed and notes that she isn’t wearing a bra. Her back is to him, and he can finally see her birthmark, though it is “more vegetal than sexual” (90). He is impressed with Yeong-hye’s composure and begins painting flowers across her back as she lies naked on the floor. He realizes that “this was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated” (92). 

Afterward, despite the whole situation being “undeniably bizarre” (93), he and Yeong-hye sit and have tea briefly. Next, he paints the front of her body, describing her “calm acceptance” as “something sacred” (95). Before they leave the studio, Yeong-hye asks him in the paint will come off with water, emphasizing that she doesn’t “want it to come off” (96). 

He and Yeong-hye go out to eat. When he asks her why she is a vegetarian, she responds that it’s because of a dream, and he wonders whether her behavior of baring her “breasts to the sunlight […] [is] because of a dream too” (98). After he drops her off at her apartment, he can’t stop thinking about Yeong-hye’s body. 

He returns home and picks up his son from the next-door neighbor. After putting his son to bed, he calls In-hye and says he is going back to the studio. After working overnight, he believes that “the tapes had turned out better than he’d expected” (101) and labels the tape “Mongolian Mark 1—Flowers of Night and Flowers of Day” (102). He imagines doing a second tape but is worried that it isn’t possible, for “if he was to choose a man to be filmed having sex with his sister-in-law, whoever it was it couldn’t be him” (102). 

When he wakes from a short nap in the sauna, the brother-in-law has a brief vision of having sex with Yeong-hye with her whole body covered “evenly with that pale wash of green” (103). He calls Yeong-hye to arrange the next session and cautions her that a man will be coming as well. The brother-in-law calls In-hye to say he won’t be coming home. Finally, “once the vague mix of guilt, regret, and uncertainty” (105) passes, the brother-in-law calls J to ask him to attend the filming as well. 

When the brother-in-law proposes the filming to J, at first, J is “flustered” (107) and doesn’t know why he should be the one to pose naked with a woman. Once Yeong-hye arrives, still fully painted, the brother-in-law convinces J to undress and begins painting him. Once both models are naked, the brother-in-law begins filming as they interact with each other, with Yeong-hye taking the lead. After some time goes by, the brother-in-law suggests that they “do it, you know, for real” (111). While Yeong-hye doesn’t react, J “suddenly push[es] her away” (111) and accuses the brother-in-law of trying to make pornography. Eventually Yeong-hye helps convince J to “soften,” and they briefly have sex on camera, their bodies overlapping “like two petals” (111). 

J is unhappy after the experience; he believes “there are just parts of [him]self that [he] need[s] to, to awaken” (112). After J leaves, the brother-in-law locks the door and tries to pull Yeong-hye’s jeans off. She rejects him because his body isn’t painted with flowers. 

The brother-in-law drives home with the words “I wish I were dead” (114) echoing in his mind. He meets up with his ex-girlfriend, P, who paints his body with flowers. The brother-in-law arrives at Yeong-hye’s apartment, and he finds her sitting in the dark on her mattress. She says that he smells “of paint” (118), and they have animalistic sex. The brother-in-law ejaculates inside of her. They turn on the lights, and she looks at the flowers on his body. They have sex in several different positions on camera, and he “shudder[s] at the appalling nature of their union, a union of images that were somehow repellent and yet compellingly beautiful” (120). 

When the brother-in-law wakes up, he sees his wife sitting at Yeong-hye’s kitchen table. In-hye “struggle[s] to maintain her composure” (123); she came to Yeong-hye’s apartment to check on her. When the brother-in-law tries to explain, In-hye says that she’s called emergency services because “[he] and Yeong-hye are both clearly in need of mental treatment” (124). Yeong-hye gets out of bed as the husband and wife argue and walks out “onto the veranda,” where she “thrust her glittering golden breasts over the veranda railing” (125). The brother-in-law contemplates suicide, feeling compelled to “throw himself over the railing against which she was leaning” (125). However, the part closes with him still “standing there as if rooted to the spot, as if this were the final moment of his life” (126).