Looking over Yeong-hye's journey throughout the book and how Han King writes her to be a reclusive character as time goes on, I feel like Kafka author Murakami would try to make a connection with The Vegetarian and his idea of what the two story house is, especially considering Yeong-hye's state throughout the book. For Yeong-hye, it seems like she would be stuck inside the sub-basement, where she is stuck in her own little world of some weird fantasy, particularly later on in the book once she has her interactions with her brother-in-law. Prior to this, she is only having horrific dreams, such as the first one she has where she tries "...to push past but the meat, there's no end to the meat, and no exit. Blood in my mouth..." (Kang 18). These dreams do influence her decision to become a vegetarian, which isn't something too out of the ordinary. However, Yeong-hye's husband, Mr. Cheong, doesn't approve of this and other slight changes in her lifestyle, leading him to rape her and for him to tell her family about her vegetarianism. This family dinner completely destroys both the family dynamic but also her trust in them, as her father tries to shove meat down her throat. She ultimately cuts herself and is taken to a hospital, where she begins a true decline. Later on, Yeong-hye's brother-in-law encourages her to help him with his weird artistic vision of people having sex while they have painted flowers on them, which she accepts until she realizes she is being taken advantage of. If Haruki Murakami looked at both of these characters,. he could easily make point out both of these character's flaws. Mr. Cheong views his life as being one that is meant to be normal, and that he thinks of Yeong-hye as "...completely unremarkable in every way" (Kang 9). As Murakami would say in his own book, people like Mr. Cheong would be called "hollow men...who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw" (Murakami 181). He views that his purpose in life is to be average with average jobs and an average wife, and so he would be a man who would have no passion or goals, making him seem hollow inside. Meanwhile, Yeong-hye's brother-in-law would put himself in the sub-basement, since aside from a couple exceptions, he's just getting carried away in his erotic artistic visions. Yeong-hye and her brother-in-law both engage in this weird fantasy, which disgusts In-hye, Yeong-hye's sister and who is married to the brother-in-law. Murakami would put the brother-in-law as being in a basement and sub-basement depending on his mood, and he eventually snaps back to the first floor once he realizes how much trouble he is in with his wife, to the point where he considers suicide as the only way out. Murakami has provided enough details with the sub-basement that it can be easier to interpret everyone's lives in The Vegetarian.
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