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The Older Brother
The middle brother is the second child of Dong-ho’s father and Dong-ho’s mother. He is not as successful as his older brother, who moves to Seoul, and he struggles with survivor’s guilt following Dong-ho’s death. Though the middle brother remains in Gwangju his entire life, working at a “cram school” (a private tutoring company), he is reluctant to visit home. The older brother blames the middle brother for Dong-ho’s death, believing that he could have done more to bring Dong-ho home from the Provincial Office on that fateful night. Dong-ho’s mother notes that the middle brother has internalized this sense of guilt: he is constantly angry and agitated. And even decades later, the middle brother cannot let go of his wish for revenge on the soldiers who killed Dong-ho.
The Middle Brother Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by The Middle Brother or refer to The Middle Brother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1: The Boy, 1980 Quotes
“Let’s go home,” she says. You give your wrist a violent wrench, trying to shake free of her grip. The insistent, desperate strength in that grip is frightening, somehow, making you think of someone drowning. You have to use your other hand to pry her fingers away, one by one. “The army is coming. Let’s go home, now.”
[…] You turn around and call back to her: “We’re going to close up here at six, Mum.” […] You call again, louder this time: “Once we've closed up, I'll come home. I promise.”
[…] “Make sure you do,” she says. “Be back before the sun sets. We’ll all have dinner together.”
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Chapter 6: The Boy’s Mother, 2010 Quotes
“I don’t like summer but I like summer nights”: that was something you came out with the year you turned eight. I liked the sound of those words, and I remember thinking to myself, he’ll be a poet. Times when you three boys sat out on the bench in the yard, sharing watermelon with your father on hot summer nights. When your tongue groped for the sticky sweet remnants smeared around your mouth.
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Epilogue: The Writer, 2013 Quotes
Permission? Yes, you have my permission, but only if you do it properly. Please, write your book so that no one will ever be able to desecrate my brother’s memory again […]
Whenever we had a toe war, I always won.
He was really ticklish, you see.
All I had to do was poke his foot with my big toe and he’d start squirming.
At first I couldn’t tell whether he was grimacing like that because he was ticklish, or because it really hurt…
But then he would turn bright red and laugh.
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The Middle Brother Character Timeline in Human Acts
The timeline below shows where the character The Middle Brother appears in Human Acts. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: The Boy, 1980
...after row of dead bodies brought to the Provincial Office for burial, listens closely. His middle brother has warned him to come home, telling him that the city center is not safe—but...
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...at the hospital, not here. Dong-ho’s mother and brothers—the oldest brother at school in Seoul, the middle brother trying to pass his exams—are terrified that Dong-ho is dealing with these corpses. They are...
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Chapter 6: The Boy’s Mother, 2010
...was, his face ashen from losing so much blood. Nor she can forget how Dong-ho’s middle brother vowed revenge. Years later, the middle son looks so much older than he should—his anger...
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While Dong-ho’s middle brother remains enraged, his older brother is friendly and bubbly, visiting Dong-ho’s mother every so often...
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During one visit, the older brother accused the middle brother of failing to save Dong-ho’s life. In response, the middle brother howled in pain, violently...
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...the 7:00 p.m. curfew rolled around and Dong-ho still wasn’t home, Dong-ho’s mother and his middle brother walked the 40 minutes to the gym to retrieve him. But when they arrived, the...
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The middle brother wanted to go inside the gym to retrieve Dong-ho, but Dong-ho’s mother refused: she couldn’t...
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Epilogue: The Writer, 2013
...a middling “cram school.” The writer arranges to meet with this man, who is Dong-ho’s middle brother .
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The middle brother is initially hesitant to share his story with the writer. But then he thinks about...
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