Burnt Manuscript
In Chapter 3, the editor Eun-sook picks up a manuscript of collected plays from the censor's office. Her initial impression upon opening the proof is that it has been "burned...thrown into a fire and left to blacken, reduced to little more than a lump of coal" due to how much content the censors redacted. This image vividly illustrates the destructive intensity of the censoring process. Eun-sook acknowledges that the publishing house's efforts have been in vain because there is no way they can publish this collection. Futility and despair are all that remain in the image of the blacked-out manuscript.
The Moon
After his death, Jeong-dae's soul insists on staying close to his body to witness what will happen to it. Each time he feels the presence of another soul, he looks up at the moon, wishing that it would watch over him, "an eye bright with intelligence" (Chapter 2). But "in reality," the moon was "nothing more than a huge, desolate lump of rock, utterly inert." Here, Jeong-dae seeks comfort from nature but fails to find any in the brutal reality of his circumstances.
Later in Chapter 5, Seon-ju describes how her old friend and mentor Seong-hee waxed poetic about the moon, calling it "the eye of the night." This image scared Seon-ju.
The Natural Force of Existence
In the second chapter, Jeong-dae (in soul form) describes first clinging to his body upon death, but then later struggling to be free of it. In his desire to seek out the people who murdered him and his sister, he says, "I wanted to shuck off my body as a snake sheds its skin. I wanted to sever the pure strength, that force thin and taut as a spider's web, dilating and contracting, from the inert lump of rotting flesh." This quote designates vital energy (referred to in the novel as the soul) as something that can exist separate from the body even after death. Han uses natural imagery to convey this point.
Oxblood Soup
Two years after the narrator from Chapter 4 is released from prison, he runs into a fellow prisoner named Kim Jin-su. Seeing Jin-su bent over a bowl of food parallels the narrator's memories of being forced to share scant meals with Jin-su in prison. The ambiguity of their encounter is made apparent in the image of Jin-su "peering into the bottom of the soup as though its oily swirls of black oxblood were congealing to form a riddle, one whose answer would remain impenetrable" (Chapter 4). The narrator still deals with questions about what happened and what it means not only for his life, but for all of humanity. Further, the emphasis on food and uncertainty in this image underlies the narrator's conception of his life. After being tortured in prison, the narrator experienced both uncontrollable hunger and physical disgust at his body.
