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Chapter 2: The Boy’s Friend, 1980
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Human Acts, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Connection
Bodies and Vulnerability
Language, Memory, and Power
Youth, Courage, and Naivety
Afterlife and the Soul
Summary
Analysis
It’s mid-November, five years after the violence at Gwangju. Today, Kim Eun-sook, now an editor at a local publishing house, was slapped seven times, so brutally that her cheek bruised and she lost her hearing in one ear. She decides to head home rather than going to work, vowing to spend one day forgetting each slap, so that in a week this violence will be only a memory.
Five years later, the worst of the Gwangju massacre has subsided—but Chun Doo-hwan remains in power, and the threat of violence is no less omnipresent (as those seven slaps make clear). The fact that Eun-sook works in a publishing house is also worth noting—language and storytelling, in the background in the young boys’ narratives, will come even more into focus here.
Themes
When she gets home, Eun-sook lies down for 20 minutes. Then she gets up, washes her face, brushes her teeth, and crawls back into bed. The phone is ringing, but she feels that she cannot answer and give an explanation. It is getting dark outside by the time Eun-sook sits up in bed. She wonders how she will “forget the first slap,” and she recalls waiting quietly for the first slaps to be over, not running away.
Eun-sook’s quiet, isolated coping mechanisms suggests that she is still deeply traumatized by the horrors she witnessed in 1980. While Jeong-dae did his best to remember delicious foods and jokes with his sister, it now becomes evident that violence is the one thing worth forgetting. But ironically, as Eun-sook’s question demonstrates, violence is one of the hardest things to forget.
Themes
The man who interrogated her, calling her a “bitch” and hitting her so hard it drew blood, had “thin lips” and looked “utterly ordinary.” The interrogator struck Eun-sook as a middle manager, even as he violently demanded to know where the translator (“that bastard”) was.
It seems that Eun-sook was slapped because she worked with a translator wanted by the state. First, then, interrogator’s violence shows just how dangerous Chun’s government understands language to be. More than that, though, the “utterly ordinary” appearance of the interrogator suggests that anyone is capable of brutality (just as Dong-ho’s life and death shows that anyone is capable of great bravery).
Themes
Eun-sook met with the translator two weeks ago, on the first really cold day of fall. They shared tea and a pastry as the translator went through the manuscript proofs and edited them. The translator was courteous and seemed timid, even though Eun-sook knew he was a wanted criminal. When she asked him how to contact him to give him his royalties, he responded vaguely, promising only to be in touch.
The translator is clearly engaged in bringing some earth-shaking texts to the South Korean people, but he goes about this daring business with an air of ease and normalcy. In many ways, then, the translator is the converse of the interrogator: he seems “ordinary,” but he is in fact a radical, selfless figure.
Themes
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In the interrogation room two weeks later, as the slaps continued, Eun-sook thought back to the fountain in Gwangju. Then, at 18, she had seen the glittering jets of water as an attack. Eun-sook had called the Provincial Office in tears, wondering how the fountain—which had been turned off since the beginning of the uprising—could now be turned on again, as if nothing had changed. Years later, as the first slap came, Eun-sook couldn’t believe it: “surely he’s not going to hit me,” she’d thought, until the interrogator hit her with so much force her neck seemed to snap.
The spurting fountains at the Provincial Office, an important image throughout Eun-sook’s narrative, are so painful in part because they suggest that people are trying to move on from the 5:18 losses. In turning on the fountain jets, Eun-sook thinks, the Gwangju city government is glossing over the memory of all people lost in the massacre. By pairing this memory with the interrogator’s slaps, Eun-sook seems to suggest that forgetting the murdered protests is itself a violent act, almost akin to being hit.
Themes
In the present, Eun-sook is back at the office. Noticing her face, Eun-sook’s publisher offers to take her out to barbecue. Eun-sook wonders if his friendliness might be guilt—is he the one who turned her in to the authorities? After all, the publisher had gone to the police station only minutes before she had, even speaking with the same interrogator.
As Eun-sook’s boss, the publisher likely could have taken responsibility for her work with the translator—but he did not, and Eun-sook was then slapped seven times. The publisher’s guilt here has a faint echo of the guilt Dong-ho feels about Jeong-dae and Jeong-mi, as if by not taking the bullet himself he was partially responsible for their deaths.
Themes
Eun-sook declines the publisher’s offer of barbecue—she finds the sight of meat cooking revolting. But the publisher convinces her to let him take her out to lunch. Aa they finish their meal, the publisher offers to go to the censor’s office in Eun-sook’s place tomorrow. Eun-sook knows the publisher feels guilty, even though he had probably only stuck to the facts (“Kim Eun-sook is the editor in charge”). She tries to smile to reassure him, but her bruise makes the smile look grotesque.
Like the narrator will say in a later chapter, Eun-sook’s hatred of meat is likely linked to the human carnage she witnessed during the 5:18 uprising. The publisher here appears as a character perched between bravery and cowardice: he wants to get the controversial literature to press, but he is not quite courageous enough to face the consequences himself.
Themes
After work, Eun-sook walks home. Now, she thinks about the second slap—why did the interrogator use his left hand when he used his right hand for everything else? She feels intense nausea. Again, Eun-sook recalls the fact that she did not move when she was hit.
Eun-sook now tries to make sense of something senseless—how could she ever give logic to something so outside the bounds of normal human language and contact?
Themes
The next day, Eun-sook arrives at the censor’s office. As always, someone searches her bag. “At such moments,” Eun-sook reflects, “a part of one’s self must be temporarily detached from the whole.” The security guard examines her residence card, her tube of Vaseline, and her sanitary pads.
Already, several characters have lost sight of their individual selves in the heat of a crowd. But what Eun-sook experiences here is different: the shame and discomfort of state surveillance causes her to dissociate, “detach[ing]” from her “self.”
Themes
Eun-sook recalls another such search that happened soon after she had arrived at Seoul for college. She had been in the cafeteria when plainclothes policemen rushed in, beating students and throwing furniture. Without thinking, Eun-sook picked up a flier on the floor. The flier’s big block lettering read: “DOWN WITH THE BUTCHER CHUN DOO-HWAN.” But as soon as her hand closed around the leaflet, the police pulled her hair, dragging her from her chair.
Here, Eun-sook’s history in the past five years comes clear. After protesting in Gwangju as a high school student, she got caught up in similar protest movements in college. Even when she tries to avoid protest, therefore, it seems as if activism is baked into Eun-sook’s existence. It is also worth noticing that the lettering on the flier is, to the state police, a threat—language always has real power, so language always must be quashed.
Themes
Now, in the censor’s office, Eun-sook stares up at the framed picture of Chun Doo-hwan. She wonders how a face can conceal so much evil and brutality. Eun-sook waits as the censors, hard at work, make their way through a variety of texts. Finally her name is called, though by the way the desk manager asks her to sign, it is clear that something unusual has happened with Eun-sook’s text.
The fact that all texts must pass through the censor’s office speaks to Chun’s government’s fear of the written word. Whether it is criminalizing translators, brutalizing editors, or crossing out sentences in books, Chun’s administration is determined to erase all of the language that questions it.
Themes
Eun-sook goes to the censor’s office all the time, and usually a dozen words have been crossed out or rearranged. But this time, she feels as if “the pages have been burned.” More than half the text has been crossed out. Sometimes, as if going through the text sentence by sentence is too exhausting, the censors use an ink roller to black out an entire page. Eun-sook knows that the plays can never be published like this.
Just as it felt violent to Eun-sook when the fountains in Gwangju were turned back on, the act of censorship carries its own brutality, “burn[ing]” the pages (and making their editor feel scorched, too). Even as pens and ink are tools of power and protest in the right hands, then, when state officials wield writing implements, they become dangerous weapons.
Themes
Unbidden, some of the sentences from the text’s introduction pop into Eun-sook’s mind (“after you were lost to us, all our hours declined into evening”). As her cheekbone throbs, Eun-sook wonders again how the fountain in Gwangju could ever be on again. “What could we possibly be celebrating?” she muses.
The glimpses of text that Eun-sook reflects on now suggests that the play in question is meant to honor and parallel the 5:18 massacre. Thus, erasing this narrative, like turning on the jets in the fountains, almost further violates those already killed.
Themes
Now, it is four days since the slaps, so Eun-sook is devoted to forgetting the fourth slap. It is a Saturday, but instead of making weekend plans with friends or a date, Eun-sook will just finish work (she gets out early today), make dinner, and then go to sleep. She does not have any friends from university that she could see, even if she wanted to.
Many of the consequences of the Gwangju massacre were embodied and immediate. But Eun-sook’s loneliness is no doubt a result of the fear and torment she was subjected to as a student activist, both in high school and at university.
Themes
Before the work day is done, Eun-sook’s Mr. Seo, the producer from the theater, arrives, interrupting Eun-sook’s thoughts. Having heard that the censors ink-rolled much of the text, Mr. Seo has come to see for himself. Eun-sook presents him with the proofs. As Mr. Seo sees the damage, Eun-sook begins to cry. She keeps apologizing, though Mr. Seo assures her she has nothing to apologize for. Eun-sook almost spills her coffee on the proof, and Mr. Seo snaps it up—“as though it still contains something.”
Once more, the state censor’s ink roller is a weapon, working metaphorically to cause pain but also bringing Eun-sook to very literal tears. Mr. Seo’s determination to save the play hints at the desperation these protestors feel to communicate their message, even against the state’s widespread, efficient silencing.
Themes
On Sunday, Eun-sook plans to sleep in, but as always, she is wide awake by 4:00 a.m. It is time to do laundry, so she throws her clothes into the machine and tries to go back to sleep. Now, she wants to forget the fifth slap, which drew blood to the surface of her skin. As the washing machine finishes and Eun-sook hangs her clothes up to dry, she wishes these simple household chores would take up more of her time.
On the one hand, Eun-sook is desperate to find anything that could block out the memory of these slaps. But on the other hand, the sheer work of survival—doing laundry, hanging clothes—feels frustratingly pointless to Eun-sook, who often struggles with the idea that she survives when so many of her loved ones were murdered.
Themes
In her youth, people often complimented Eun-sook for being cute. But after the Gwangju uprising, no one praises Eun-sook’s looks anymore. And she herself just wants to speed up the aging process, hoping life will come to an end soon. As Eun-sook makes breakfast, she resents that she still feels hungry, even after all the horror and grief she has witnessed.
Even in the first days of the Gwangju uprising, Dong-ho noticed that Eun-sook looked to be “hollow[ing]” out, as if her soul was disappearing in front of him; now, that process seems complete. In her frustration with eating, Eun-sook is struggling with what could be called survivor’s guilt—how can she continue to eat when the dead cannot?
Themes
After the violence in Gwangju, Eun-sook’s mother begged her to move on. So Eun-sook went to university—but even at university, there were always policemen around, beating student protestors and smashing window. Eun-sook suffered from terrible nightmares after the violence in Gwangju, and it was almost a relief when returned home to tend to her ailing father. Soon, Eun-sook dropped out of school and took a job at the publishing house. She was grateful not only to spare her family the financial burden but to know that now, she could not join student protests—and so she would not be killed.
Frequently, the narrative points out that people behave differently on their own than they do when in crowds or mobs. But it is still worth noting that Eun-sook seems almost biologically, inevitably drawn to protest: she moves from activism in Gwangju as a high schooler to sit-ins in college to publishing work that represents a subtler form of protest. In other words, while many might have moments of protest under the right circumstances, only rare people like Eun-sook do so consistently.
Themes
The day the army returned to Gwangju, Eun-sook had not “set her mind on surviving.” She remembers that fateful evening: after dinner, she sneaks out from her house, returning to the Provincial Office. When she gets there, the women are arguing about whether they should carry guns. Seon-ju, always quiet, says very little, though she flashes Eun-sook a smile as she argued that the women should be armed.
Even with years of reflection, Eun-sook struggles to make sense of her motivations and thought processes on the night that Dong-ho died. Whether or not she chose to “survive” is an open question, just as Eun-sook and others will agonize over whether Dong-ho knew the risks he was taking.
Themes
Jin-su arrives, asking three of the women to stay behind as guards. Though all of the women initially want to stay as a show of solidarity, Jin-su convinces them that it would look bad for the resistance if too many were killed. To her surprise, Eun-sook finds that her time around dead bodies has made her more afraid of death: “she didn’t want her last breath to be from a gaping mouth.”
Jin-su insists that women should be treated with a kind of chivalry, even though (as Seon-ju’s chapter will reveal) some of the worst violence in this era of Korean history was against women. Interestingly, Eun-sook’s fear of death is not as much about the absence of life as it is about the gruesome bodily decomposition she has witnessed. Eun-sook understands just how fragile bodies are, and that makes her all the more afraid of damaging her own.
Themes
Seon-ju stays behind, as does Dong-ho (“you”), wearing his gym sweater and his blue trackpants. Eun-sook tries to convince the other soldiers to send him home, explaining that he is only in middle school. But Dong-ho remains. (“Had she ever had such a thing as a soul,” Eun-sook reflects in the present, “that was the moment of its shattering.”)
There are three important ideas in this passage. First, Eun-sook addresses Dong-ho as “you,” making it clear that this section, too, is written as a kind of letter to the murdered little boy. Second, Eun-sook mentions her “soul”—but it has lost the lightness and “fluttering” flexibility that Dong-ho saw when his grandmother died. Third, for Dong-ho, the loose-fitting trackpants were a symbol for his beloved friend Jeong-dae; for Eun-sook they represent Dong-ho in a similar way.
Themes
Eun-sook leaves, hiding herself in a nearby hospital with a friend whose aunt is a patient. Sheets are hanging from all the windows, and it is pitch black, but all the patients and nurses fear that they might be killed. Each time the friend’s aunt asks a question, the friend can only reply, “I don’t know, Aunty.” No one can tell how much time has passed.
Eun-sook and her unnamed friend are both young, but in this moment of confusion, no one can really “know” anything. This moment thus inverts the usual pattern of life: many of Gwangju’s young people end up taking care of the old instead of the other way around.
Themes
Finally, a voice over the loudspeaker announces that the army is returning. The voice implores all citizens to come in front of the Provincial Office, explaining that “we have resolved to fight to the end.” Eun-sook stays put, listening to the sounds of combat boots and shooting and trucks. In the present, Eun-sook’s thoughts shoot back to Dong-ho. Eun-sook remembers that Dong-ho’s eyelids quivered, “because you were afraid. Because you wanted to live.”
Returning to the Provincial Office would meet certain death, so the fact that Eun-sook stays put amounts to a decision—she is choosing to survive. But though Dong-ho similarly longs to survive (“you wanted to live,” Eun-sook recalls), he does not choose safety when the time comes. Instead, his childlike inability to act rationally on his fear is one of the reasons his death continues to strike Eun-sook as the greatest tragedy of all.
Themes
Now, it is six days since the slaps, and the publisher has just received an invitation to the premiere of the censored play. Eun-sook wonders how staging the play will be possible, since so much of it has been removed. But when the published book arrives, Eun-sook is surprised to see that only a few paragraphs have been excised. And instead of the wanted translator’s name on the cover, Eun-sook sees that the translation has been credited to the publisher’s cousin in America. The publisher seems proud, though Eun-sook notices the fear in his eyes.
Dong-ho, like the others killed that night at the Provincial Office, was only given one chance to be brave—which is part of the tragedy of that loss. But because the publisher continues to live and work, he is able to make up for his earlier cowardice at the interrogator’s office by ignoring the censors now. The publisher also puts himself at risk by lying about who did the translation (presumably so that the state will not immediately condemn the plays for their association with the wanted translator).
Themes
A few hours later, Eun-sook is alone in the office. She finds a book about the psychology of crowds, which focuses on protest movements and wars throughout history. The book argues that large groups lead to more nobility and barbarism, “through that magnification which occurs naturally in crowds.” In the next paragraph, the censor has drawn his pen over two sentences: “what is humanity? What do we have to do to keep humanity as one thing and not another?”
This vital excerpt gives theoretical backing to the groupthink Eun-sook and the other organizers have long intuited: being in a crowd almost always “magnifies” each individual’s kind or cruel traits. The fact that the censors have crossed out the question about humanity makes the violent symbolism of the censor’s pen literal—here, the state is literally crossing out “humanity” as an idea.
Themes
Eun-sook has “no faith” in humanity anymore. She thinks back to the day after the soldiers slaughtered so many people in Gwangju, when they went door-to-door asking parents if their children had been involved in the demonstrations. Eventually, Eun-sook learned from her mother that all of the corpses were being deposited in a single mass grave. The fountain was still dry that day. But now, no matter how any times Eun-sook calls the Provincial Office, no one will turn the fountain off.
Eun-sook’s loss of faith seems to stem from two things. First, the methodical, uncaring nature of the violence made her lose hope in people. Then, the fact that everyone in Gwangju seemed to move on from the atrocity (as seen by the jetting streams of the fountain) made her give up on humanity forever.
Themes
Instead of trying to forget the last two slaps, Eun-sook goes to see the censored play. The play begins almost like a dance, as a woman and a man, both dressed in mourning clothes, pass each other silently. Eun-sook looks around, taking in the journalists and other artists in the packed audience. She also notices plain-clothed policemen, and she fears that the policemen will beat Mr. Seo and the actors in the play will be beaten when they see that they have defied the censors.
If these policemen could beat Mr. Seo, then Eun-sook is surely in danger as well. But staying true to the collectivist mindset she has had since high school, Eun-sook fears more for the others around her than she seems to fear for herself.
Themes
But rather than say the censored lines, the actors only move their lips—“after you died I could not hold a funeral,” the actress mouths silently, “and so my life became a funeral.” After a few moments, the lights come up on the audience, and Eun-sook sees a little boy wearing trackpants, surrounded by older actors who are shrieking and moaning. The little boy, who is carrying a skeleton, reminds Eun-sook of Dong-ho.
If erasure of language is one of Chun Doo-hwan’s central ways of maintaining power, then the persistence these actors show—making the shapes of censored words even if they do not say their sounds—is one of the most powerful forms of protest. In staging the play this way, therefore, Mr. Seo is demonstrating that even in the absence of language, South Koreans will find ways to make their dissent known.
Themes
Gradually, all the actors stop moving. Finally, there’s just one old woman frozen onstage. The little boy jumps on her back, “like the spirit of someone dead.” Funeral odes, written on scraps of paper, begin to fall from the ceiling. Eun-sook is weeping, her memories of Dong-ho fresh, but she does not look away. Instead, she “stares fiercely at the boy’s face, at the movement of his silenced lips.”
This little boy wearing the trackpants that Eun-sook and others so associate with Dong-ho seems as though he is Dong-ho’s soul (or “spirit”) made tangible. Though this image is deeply painful for Eun-sook, it is also galvanizing—Eun-sook knows this is a pain she cannot look away from. And in seeing Dong-ho’s “silence” reenacted, Eun-sook feels newly “fierce.”
Themes
