The Vegetarian

In Part 3, In-hye visits Yeong-hye at the Ch’ukseong Psychiatric Hospital. It rains heavily as she travels by bus to the hospital, and In-hye spends the ride thinking about the past. Three months ago, Yeong-hye went missing from the hospital and was found in “an isolated spot […] standing there stock-still and soaked with rain as if she herself were one of the glistening trees” (131). 

As the bus ride continues, In-hye recalls that she only visited monthly before Yeong-hye had gone missing. Now, In-hye visits weekly. In-hye sometimes had moments where Yeong-hye would eat something that In-hye had brought to the hospital, and In-hye believed that these moments “never failed to lighten her heart” (135). In-hye reflects on Yeong-hye’s maturation into an adult who was “difficult to read […] like a total stranger” (135). In-hye believes that both her husband and Yeong-hye are “baffling to her in exactly the same way” (136). 

After getting off the bus, In-hye walks through a long dark tunnel toward the hospital. She thinks about her husband and his artwork, wondering if she had ever “really understood her husband’s true nature” (137). When they had met, she believed that she wanted to “use her own strength” to allow this tired man “to rest” (137). In-hye was never sure of her feelings for her husband and vice versa. Now, when Ji-woo asks In-hye, “Is there a dad in our family?” (140), she answers in the negative.

When In-hye arrives at the hospital, she notes a large zelkova tree in the front of the garden. She waits for the doctor and thinks about her lack of sleep for the last three months. In-hye has been haunted by her dream of Yeong-hye’s voice, the forest, and “her own face with the blood trickling from her eye” (141). In-hye thinks back to the fateful luncheon with her family when her father slapped Yeong-hye and wonders if there’s “something she could have done to prevent it” (142). In-hye runs through the events that followed, when she had caught her husband and Yeong-hye in bed together. Now, a year later, Yeong-hye is still hospitalized, the family is splintered apart, and In-hye is forcing herself to “[get] by, as she always had done” (144). 

A young doctor speaks with In-hye: If Yeong-hye is not able to take food intravenously today, they will be forced to transfer her to the critical ward at the general hospital. In-hye is given 30 minutes to speak with Yeong-hye. The doctor cautions her that recovery in Yeong-hye’s case is unlikely and reminds In-hye to take care of herself. 

In-hye goes back to the reception area and sees a man bringing in an older woman who begins cursing loudly. In-hye reflects on her “blasé” (147) attitude toward the mentally ill; she thinks back to the first time she brought Yeong-hye to the hospital, when Yeong-hye had “looked so normal that the receptionist had actually had to ask which one of them was the patient” (149). In-hye feels guilty for abandoning her sister at the hospital. When it was time to leave, Yeong-hye said to her: “Sister … all the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters” (150). 

A nurse tells In-hye that Yeong-hye has stopped talking and has been refusing the IV. In-hye looks down the hall and remembers when she had visited in March. On that day, Yeong-hye had refused to come out and had apparently been staying indoors for a few days. In-hye had come across “a female patient doing a handstand at the far end of the western corridor” (152) and was surprised to discover that it was Yeong-hye. After getting Yeong-hye to stop her handstand, In-hye had sat with her and tried to feed her. Yeong-hye had explained that she didn’t “need to eat anymore” because she had figured out that trees “actually stand with both arms in the earth” (153). Yeong-hye is convinced that she can be a tree, telling her sister that she doesn’t need “this kind of food, sister. I need water” (154). 

On her way to Yeong-hye’s ward, In-hye encounters a few patients who are anxious to talk to a doctor or nurse. As In-hye moves on, she notes that the nurses seem “all well and truly fed up with Yeong-hye” (155). In-hye gets to the ward and speaks with Hee-joo, another patient. The hospital pays Hee-joo a small amount to take care of Yeong-hye. Hee-joo grasps In-hye’s hand and says, “They’re saying Yeong-hye might die” (155). Yeong-hye has started vomiting blood. In-hye looks at Yeong-hye and notes how skinny she has become, “looking like a freakish overgrown child” (156). In-hye thanks Hee-joo several times for her care. When Hee-joo leaves, In-hye checks Yeong-hye’s body for burst veins and “finds them everywhere” (157), meaning that the doctors can only inject an IV in an artery. The doctors could also try “inserting a long tube” (158) with gruel into Yeong-hye’s nose, but in the past, she had rejected this by closing her throat. 

In-hye sits in her sister’s room for a long time. She tries to tempt Yeong-hye with various fruits, but Yeong-hye will not respond. Later, she tries to get Yeong-hye to drink some tea, but Yeong-hye still won’t respond. Frustrated, In-hye says, “You have to live” (161), and then wonders if Yeong-hye is actually “trying to die” (161). 

When In-hye had visited a month before, Yeong-hye had asked, “Why, is it such a bad thing to die?” (162), and In-hye recalled a childhood memory. In the memory, In-hye and Yeong-hye had gotten lost on a mountain. Yeong-hye had proposed, “Let’s just not go back” (162). In-hye had been confused by the idea of not going back, but now, as an adult, she can understand that Yeong-hye had been trying to escape her father’s beatings. As the youngest, Yeong-hye was the sole victim of their father’s violence and “absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones” (163). In-hye believes that her role as the “hard-working, self-sacrificing eldest had been a sign not of maturity but of cowardice” (163). In-hye again wonders if she could have prevented any of this from happening. 

In-hye also thinks about her marriage to her husband and wishes she hadn’t been with him. She remembers when he had called her earlier that year asking to see Ji-woo. She didn’t want to talk to him and knew “that if she refused him this one more time” (164) he would probably stop talking to her. She hung up the phone. In-hye watches her sister, who seems to be sleeping. Yeong-hye starts talking incoherently, and then Hee-joo returns to the room.

In-hye recalls a memory that she “has never been able to tell anyone else about” (166). She bled “from her vagina for close on a month” (166) but was terrified of seeking medical help. Eventually, she went to the doctor who removed a polyp from the vaginal wall in a painful procedure. After some time, the cut healed, but In-hye continued to feel “as though there were still an open wound inside her body” (168). Later, when her husband came home and had sex with her despite her protests, she “managed to get through it by thinking to herself that it was all right, it would be just this one time” (169). Yet that morning and afterward, she began having suicidal ideations. 

As time passes in the hospital, In-hye turns her attention back to her sister, who does not respond to In-hye. After a few moments pass, In-hye concludes that what Yeong-hye is doing is the “natural progression from what [In-hye] has recently been experiencing” (172). In-hye marvels at how “Yeong-hye had simply let fall the slender thread that had kept her connected with everyday life” (172). After more time passes, In-hye fights the urge to “shake [Yeong-hye’s] wraithlike body hard” (175) and leaves the ward. 

In-hye speaks to the doctor again, and he reminds her that Yeong-hye is probably still listening, even if it doesn’t seem like it. The doctor and several nurses try to begin the procedure to force food into Yeong-hye’s body. As they hold her down, Yeong-hye begins screaming, “I … don’t … like … eating!” (179). The nurses remove In-hye from the room. Yeong-hye refuses the food repeatedly and eventually vomits blood onto the nurses. Yeong-hye is tranquilized so that she can be transferred immediately. 

In-hye, reeling from what she has witnessed, vomits in a hospital bathroom. In-hye finds Hee-joo in the hallway and thinks to herself that all the patients are trapped in the hospital. In-hye feels guilt for “having had Yeong-hye incarcerated here” (183). 

In-hye accompanies Yeong-hye in the ambulance. In-hye wonders if she herself had been the one to “let go of the thread” (186), if she would have been in Yeong-hye’s position instead. Yeong-hye wakes up. In-hye speaks quietly into Yeong-hye’s ear, “[S]urely the dream isn’t all there is?” (187). The novel closes on In-hye looking out of the window “fiercely at the trees. As if waiting for an answer” (188).