We Do Not Part Essay Questions

Discuss the way that Han Kang describes each distinct section of We Do Not Part in her Nobel Lecture.

In her Nobel Lecture, Han states that Section I ("Bird") is "a horizontal journey that follows the narrator, Kyungha, from Seoul to her friend Inseon’s home in the Jeju uplands through heavy snow towards the pet bird she has been tasked with saving." In other words, Part I mostly follows a conventional progression of time and travel. Han goes on to characterize the second section as "a vertical path that leads Kyungha and Inseon down to one of humanity’s darkest nights—to the winter of 1948 when civilians on Jeju were slaughtered—and into the ocean’s depths." "Vertical" travel involves venturing into the particulars of space and time, and Han does so in a deeply poetic way that obscures typical perceptions of reality. In the third and final part, Kyungha and Inseon "light a candle at the bottom of the sea." In other words, they honor the dead and create a light source in the abyss of human nature.

Discuss the novel's title.

We Do Not Part comes from the name that Inseon gives her and Kyungha's idea for a collaborative project. Part installation and part documentary, "We Do Not Part" was originally conceived when Kyungha felt pulled to do something concrete to process her recurring dream. In the dream, the tide rushes in and threatens to ruin gravesites (which appear figuratively in the form of trees). Even after Kyungha rescinds her agreement to do the project, Inseon goes ahead with it. This is how she grievously injures her fingers. Ultimately, the friends' failure to do the project matters as much as the idea for the project itself because it shows the impossibility of completely reckoning with past atrocities.

Provide an example of the alternative kinds of knowledge portrayed in the novel.

When Inseon ran away as a teenager, a dream vision informed her mother when she was hurt (Chapter 3). Inseon had run away from home to the mainland to escape an unbearable hatred and disgust for her mother. While walking in the street, Inseon fell five meters down an embankment at a construction site and hit her head, waking up nearly two weeks later in the hospital. The night of the accident, Jeongsim dreamed that her daughter was five years old and sitting in a field of snow, but the snow on her cheeks didn't melt. This alerted Jeongsim to the danger Inseon was in.

Jeongsim's personal history taught her how to interpret this type of dream, though Han leaves it ambiguous as to how the vision came to Jeongsim on the exact night her daughter was hurt. Back when Jeongsim was in her last year of elementary school, she and her older sister came back to their village to find everyone murdered by soldiers and police. The ice and unmelting snow on their faces signified death.

Describe Inseon's relationship with her birds.

Inseon's intense love and concern for her bird instigate the novel's action in Part I. As soon as she regains consciousness in the hospital, Inseon texts Kyungha and asks her to immediately go fill Ama's water and food bowl. This proves that Ama is Inseon's main priority.

After her mother died, Inseon adopted a relatively isolated existence. Kyungha asks her friend's apparition how she managed by herself "in a place with no street lamps or close neighbors...isolated and the power and water shut off when it snows...where just a stream away lie the remains of a village that was decimated and burned to the ground" (Chapter 7). Inseon responds that she was not in fact by herself—she had her birds. However, Inseon also questions whether they actually ever communicated in the first place when she asks if Ami was only ever a bird and she only ever a human. In doing so, she ponders the extent of love that can exist between species.

Provide an example where Kyungha contemplates what it means to be human.

We Do Not Part is a study of the human condition, including experiences like suffering, love, violence, and dignity. Han allows several passages to speak for themselves in terms of provoking deep reflection about human nature, but Kyungha also actively contemplates humanity at various points. One instance occurs in Part III when Kyungha places her hand over a photograph of bones: "Over people who no longer had eyes or tongues. Over people whose organs and muscles had rotted away. Over what was no longer human—no. Over what remained human even now." Here, humanity transcends death, which is not just the result of mortality, but the brutal act of murder. In other words, Kyungha restores dignity to those who were utterly dehumanized and whose stories were purposely swept under the rug for decades following their deaths.