Genre
A novel
Setting and Context
The story takes place in Seoul. A young woman, Yeong-hye, lives an ordinary life up until she starts seeing a horrible night dreams in which she sees her reflection in puddles of blood. Then she gives up meat and it becomes a reason why her family falls apart. Not to mention that her mental health gets worse.
Narrator and Point of View
Both the narrator and the point of view change over the course of the story. Mr. Cheong, In-hye and her husband perform the role of the narrator. The point of view is either the first point of view or the third.
Tone and Mood
Tone is cheerless, mood is disturbing.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Yeong-hye is the protagonist of the story, the meat-eating society is the antagonist of the story.
Major Conflict
The main conflict is person vs. society. More often than not people consider Yeong-hye to be mental and some of them – for instance, her parents – try to force feed her.
Climax
Yeong-hye’s hospitalization and Yeong-hye’s discovery of her husband’s obsession with her sister are climax of the story.
Foreshadowing
Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.
Understatement
Try feeding it to Yeong-hye, just tell it’s herbal medicine.
Yeong-hye’s mother pretends that vegetarianism of her daughter is just foolishness.
Allusions
The novel alludes to the Vietnam War.
Imagery
The imagery is used to describe nightmares of the protagonist.
Paradox
If you’d said that my wife had always been faintly nauseated by meat, then I could have understood it, but in reality it was quite the opposite.
Parallelism
Hide, hide behind the trees.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
When his wife was busy with something she would lend a hand with Ji-woo, taking him to the bathroom and helping him wash, her bare feet kissing the cold tiles. (A hand is synecdoche which stands for help).
Peered at him closely over her glasses. (Glasses are synecdoche which stands for specs).
Personification
Only violence is vivid enough to stick.
