The Vegetarian: Chapter 1: The Vegetarian Summary & Analysis

The book’s first section is narrated by Mr. Cheong, who opens with the statement that before his wife, Yeong-hye, turned vegetarian, she was “completely unremarkable in every way.” He goes on to say that there was never any special attraction between them, but nor were there any drawbacks to their relationship, and so they decided to get married. He confesses that he had always been inclined toward “the middle course in life,” at school, at work, and in his marriage.

Mr. Cheong continues to describe Yeong-hye’s personality: she is a woman of few words, never acts out, diligently cooks for him, and reads for her only hobby. Mr. Cheong does comment on the one odd thing about her: that she doesn’t like wearing a bra, because it makes her uncomfortable. He reproaches her for this, noting that people can see she isn’t wearing one, but she is adamant that it is constricting and he wouldn’t understand what it is like.

In all other aspects, Mr. Cheong explains, their marriage runs smoothly as they are approaching the five-year mark. One day in February, however, he wakes up just before dawn to find Yeong-hye standing in the kitchen in her nightclothes. He asks what’s wrong, but she ignores him, staring at the fridge. When he angrily puts a hand on her shoulder, she simply says, “I had a dream.” She returns to the bedroom and he follows, lying back in the bed. He is aware that she is awake, but for some reason finds himself unable to touch her or comfort her.

The next day, Mr. Cheong wakes up very late for work, and finds that instead of preparing him breakfast, Yeong-hye is throwing away all the meat in the house. He yells at her for not waking him up, and wrenches the trash bags away from her. She again repeats that she had a dream. He asks her if she’s “lost [her] mind” and calls her insane, noticing that she hasn’t ironed his shirt and that she isn’t helping him get ready as he hurries out the door to work.

The perspective shifts to Yeong-hye, inside of her nightmare, which is described in fragmented sentences. She has visions of “long bamboo sticks strung with great-blood-red gashes of meat,” and “blood in [her] mouth, blood soaked clothes sucked onto [her] skin.” She describes pushing “that red raw mass into [her] mouth.” She has a vision of her own face as she chews on the meat, and feels that the face is unfamiliar to her.

That evening, Yeong-hye prepares a meatless meal. Mr. Cheong is furious that she threw out all of the meat because of a “ridiculous dream.” He asks her to make fried eggs, but she says that she has thrown out the eggs and milk, saying it “wouldn’t be right” to keep that stuff in the house. Mr. Cheong is aghast at how “selfish” and “unreasonable” she is being, noting that this is a side of her he has never seen.

Mr. Cheong asks Yeong-hye if there will never be meat in the house again. Yeong-hye explains that he usually only has breakfast in the house, and he can survive without meat for one meal. Mr. Cheong is astonished, thinking, “it was as if she thought that this ridiculous decision of hers was something completely rational and appropriate.” He recognizes that there are reasons for being vegetarian, like health reasons or for weight loss, but in Yeong-hye he views the decision as “sheer obstinacy” to go against his wishes.

Mr. Cheong also finds Yeong-hye’s decision  strange because she’s never been a picky eater and has always been skillful in the kitchen, marinating and snipping meat with “deft and practiced” movements. Now, she is presenting him with “a sorry excuse for a meal.” He can’t understand what she is doing, and thinks to himself that he “didn’t have a clue when it came to this woman.”

A few months pass. Yeong-hye sticks to her vegetarianism and loses weight rapidly. She also becomes less attentive toward Mr. Cheong and starts to avoid having sex with him. When he asks her what the problem is, she tells him she’s tired. When he suggests that she eat meat to have more energy, she confesses the real reason: she tells him that his body “smells of meat.”

Mr. Cheong starts to worry that Yeong-hye “might genuinely be going soft in the head.” She becomes unable to sleep, seemingly haunted by the dreams she is having. He does not ask her about the dreams after hearing about the first one. He tries to reassure himself that she is sane and nothing is wrong because her family does not have a history of mental illness. He refuses to “indulge in introspection” because he believes the situation has nothing to do with him.

Yeong-hye, from her own perspective, recounts the morning before she had the first dream. She had gotten squeamish mincing meat, and when Mr. Cheong became angry at her for squirming, she accidentally cut her finger. Later that day, he yelled at her because a chip off the knife had ended up inside one of the dishes she prepared. He scolded her, raging about what could have happened if he’d swallowed the chip.

Soon after, Mr. Cheong and Yeong-hye go to a company dinner with Mr. Cheong’s co-workers—the first time his boss has invited them. Mr. Cheong insists that Yeong-hye puts on makeup and impresses upon her that the dinner has to go well. When he arrives, however, he sees she is not wearing a bra, and is extremely embarrassed when he sees his boss’s wife’s “curiosity, astonishment, and contempt” at his wife’s lack of a bra. As the dinner begins, Mr. Cheong also notes that Yeong-hye doesn’t try to engage in the other women’s pleasantries.

When the food is brought out family-style, a waiter tries to serve Yeong-hye soup, but Yeong-hye stops the waiter and tells him that she does not eat meat. The others are astonished, and start to discuss vegetarianism—questioning whether it’s possible to live without eating meat, and arguing how vegetarianism goes against human nature.

Mr. Cheong’s boss’s wife asks if Yeong-hye became a vegetarian for a reason like health or religion. Mr. Cheong cuts in, saying that Yeong-hye suffered from gastroenteritis and couldn’t sleep, so a dietician suggested she become a vegetarian. The others only then understand, and one comments that they’d “hate to share a meal with someone who considers eating meat repulsive.” Yeong-hye sits in silence.

Twelve courses are served, and Yeong-hye has little to eat, as most of the dishes contain meat or fish. The others gradually ignore her. At the end of the dinner, Yeong-hye barely eats dessert, and the boss’s wife registers concern that Yeong-hye hasn’t eaten anything. Yeong-hye simply stares in response. Mr. Cheong is shocked to see that she doesn’t have the grace to look embarrassed or respond, and he thinks that she has become “utterly unknowable.”

That evening, after Yeong-hye goes to bed, Mr. Cheong decides to phone Yeong-hye’s mother. He tells her that Yeong-hye has become a vegetarian and has imposed the diet on him. Yeong-hye’s mother is shocked that she would defy Mr. Cheong and agrees to call her daughter the next morning. Mr. Cheong then calls Yeong-hye’s sister In-hye, who is equally astonished, apologizes for her sister’s behavior, and resolves to call Yeong-hye as well.

Another of Yeong-hye’s dreams follows: “Dreams of murder,” she recounts. She dreams of metal striking a victim’s head, and “violent acts perpetrated by night.” She feels “intolerable loathing, so long suppressed” and a “shuddering, sordid, gruesome, brutal feeling.” She worries that everything has started to feel unfamiliar.

Yeong-hye’s mother and In-hye’s calls have no effect on Yeong-hye. The next weekend, Yeong-hye’s father calls, bellowing at her for disobeying Mr. Cheong. Yeong-hye puts down the phone without a word, and Mr. Cheong picks up to apologize. Yeong-hye’s father says he is “ashamed” of Yeong-hye’s behavior, which is unusual for Yeong-hye’s father as he is a strict Vietnam War veteran. According to Yeong-hye, he had whipped her until she was 18.

The family schedules a get-together in June, which Mr. Cheong hopes will set Yeong-hye straight. In the meantime, Mr. Cheong becomes sexually frustrated. On nights when he would come home inebriated, he would pin Yeong-hye to the floor and tear off her clothes as she struggled. Once he entered her, she would simply lay there, face blank, staring at the ceiling. After each sexual encounter, Yeong-hye would act as if nothing had happened, but Mr. Cheong can’t help but feel over the breakfast table that she feels bitter.

Three days before the family gathering, it is incredibly humid in Seoul, and when Mr. Cheong returns home from work, he finds that Yeong-hye is in the kitchen peeling potatoes—completely naked from the waist up. When he asks why she’s taken her clothes off, she explains, “because it’s hot.” He grits his teeth, hoping she is joking, but she is not.

The narrative returns to Yeong-hye’s dreams. She pictures throttling someone’s throat, or jamming her fingers into someone’s eye. She finds herself “flexing to kill.” She is frustrated that she can’t sleep without having these dreams, and slips in and out of consciousness, sleeping for five minutes at a time.

Yeong-hye thinks that she “can only trust [her] breasts now” because “nothing can be killed by them.” She thinks all of her other body parts can cause harm, but her breasts are round and soft. She notices that they are shrinking, however. She wonders why all her edges are sharpening, concluding, “what am I going to gouge?”

At the family gathering at In-hye’s apartment, In-hye and Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law are introduced. Mr. Cheong describes how In-hye is the primary breadwinner in the family, managing a cosmetic store, and the primary homemaker, taking care of their young son, Ji-woo. Mr. Cheong envies the brother-in-law, who doesn’t make any money and can “spend his whole life messing about with ‘art.’” Mr. Cheong comments on In-hye’s beauty in comparison to his wife’s.

Mr. Cheong, In-hye, the brother-in-law, Yeong-hye’s father and mother, and Yeong-hye’s brother Yeong-ho all make pleasant conversation over lunch, but Yeong-hye doesn’t touch her food and doesn’t speak. At the end of lunch, Yeong-hye’s father yells at her, and others quickly chime in to rebuke her behavior, noting how she is damaging her body from the weight loss.

Yeong-hye’s mother brings in an assortment of dishes with meat and fish in them, insisting that Yeong-hye eat something and trying to put a piece of pork right in front of her mouth, to no avail. Yeong-hye’s father then tries the same tactic, demanding that Yeong-hye obey her father and eat. She responds, “Father, I don’t eat meat.” He slaps her across the face and tells Mr. Cheong and Yeong-ho to grab Yeong-hye’s arms. Yeong-hye’s father picks up a piece of pork in his fingers and thrusts it toward her lips. Yeong-hye tightly seals her mouth closed.

Yeong-ho and Mr. Cheong are slightly appalled at Yeong-hye’s father’s behavior, but they do not let go of Yeong-hye. Yeong-hye’s father slaps her again, causing her mouth to gape open. He manages to jam the pork into her lips, but she screams and immediately spits out the meat, tearing herself away. She then picks up a fruit knife and slices her wrist open, blood spurting out. The brother-in-law grabs the knife and tries to stop the bleeding, picking up Yeong-hye in his arms and heading for the hospital.

Yeong-hye has a memory of herself at nine years old, when she was bitten by a dog. Yeong-hye’s father then tied the dog to his motorcycle, and drove in circles with the dog following behind, wearing the dog to exhaustion until it was being dragged by the motorcycle, choking and dripping blood from its open mouth. That evening they had a feast with the meat of the dog. As Yeong-hye eats, she remembers the dog’s eyes looking at her as she watched it die.

Yeong-hye is asleep in the hospital, now out of critical condition after being brought by Mr. Cheong and the brother-in-law. Yeong-ho, his wife In-hye, and Mr. Cheong are all watching her sleep. Yeong-ho’s wife comments that Yeong-hye’s father went too far, hitting her and force-feeding her. Mr. Cheong doesn’t comment, only feeling intense disgust at his wife.

The next day, Mr. Cheong visits Yeong-hye at the hospital after work. Yeong-hye’s mother also visits, and she gives Yeong-hye goat soup (which she tells Yeong-hye is herbal medicine). Yeong-hye is hesitant to drink it, but eventually agrees. She then says that she has to go to the bathroom, and Mr. Cheong can hear her making herself vomit in the bathroom. She then throws away the rest of the soup. Yeong-hye’s mother starts to sob, seeing her daughter so emaciated, but Yeong-hye simply stares at her and gets back into bed.

Yeong-hye thinks that she doesn’t know why “that woman” (her mother) is crying. She looks at her wrist, which she explains doesn’t bother her; instead, she feels as though something is stuck in her solar plexus—there is too much meat lodged there. “Blood and flesh, all those butchered bodies are scattered in every nook and cranny.” Yeong-hye thinks that no one can help her, and that she wants to throw herself through the window.

Yeong-hye’s mother leaves the ward, and Mr. Cheong lies down on a side bed to sleep next to Yeong-hye. He dreams that he is killing someone, thrusting a knife into their stomach and peeling off the flesh and muscle from their bones. But when he wakes up, he explains, he can’t remember who he had killed.

When Mr. Cheong wakes up, Yeong-hye has gone, and has pulled out her IV. He searches through the hospital, and ultimately finds her sitting on a bench by the fountain, her breasts exposed and hospital gown placed on her knees. She is licking at her stitched wrist. Mr. Cheong thinks to himself, “I do not know that woman.”

Mr. Cheong approaches Yeong-hye, and she smiles faintly at him. He asks what she’s doing, and covers her body with the gown. She explains that she was hot. Then, Mr. Cheong notices something in her right hand: a small white bird, with tooth marks as though it had been bitten by a predator, streaked with blood.