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Chapter 5: The Factory Girl, 2002
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 is the early 2000s, but Dong-ho’s mother still thinks she sees her son. As she follows the little boy, trying to keep up with his fast pace, she has to admit that there are many differences between him and Dong-ho: for instance, they have different haircuts and different backpacks. But they have the same energetic walk, and the same small bodies that have not yet grown into their hand-me-down trackpants. “You’d come back to me this one time,” Dong-ho’s mother thinks, “and this doddery old woman couldn’t even catch you up.”
As Seon-ju and Jeong-dae have both seen, memory can bring purpose and comfort in times of distress. But now, 30 full years after Dong-ho’s death, his mother learns just how unsatisfying memory can be. Her recollections of Dong-ho are so strong that she can overlook a different haircut and a more modern backpack just to pretend the boy in front of her is her son. But even as she chases the memory, represented by those too-big trackpants, she knows that she cannot ever “catch” her slain child.
Themes
After walking for hours behind the little boy, Dong-ho’s mother feels nauseated, so she sits down on the ground to rest. She realizes that she has been walking through a construction site, and the dust is making her sick. From then on, every time construction happens, Dong-ho’s mother stands in the streets, hoping to see that little boy, so like her son, walk by. She wishes she had called Dong-ho’s name when she saw that little boy, and that he had just turned around so she could see his face.
Dong-ho’s mother’s desperation here echoes the ancient Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, one of the most important allegories for grief and memory in the literary canon. Also, like those glittering fountain jets Eun-sook complained about, the construction around Dong-ho’s mother shows that life in Gwangju will inevitably move on from the massacre.
Themes
At the same time, Dong-ho’s mother knows this little boy can’t be her son. After all, she buried Dong-ho herself. Once, she ate a handful of the grass on his grave just to feel closer to him. Dong-ho’s mother cannot forget how pale Dong-ho 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 has aged him.
Dong-ho’s mother’s willingness to eat grass, like her willingness to chase this stranger boy, demonstrates how much mourning defies language and other traditional forms of logic or communication. In comparing the bloodless face of Dong-ho to the angry, prematurely wrinkled face of his older brother, Dong-ho’s mother again implies that the soldiers’ violence had indirect physical impacts even on those they never touched.
Themes
While Dong-ho’s middle brother remains enraged, his older brother is friendly and bubbly, visiting Dong-ho’s mother every so often to bring her food and cheer her up. The older brother looks just like Dong-ho. As a child, he would rush home from school, eager to play with the new baby or hold him on his lap.
Structurally, it is important that this sketch of Dong-ho’s early life comes so late in the narrative. By beginning with the violence and working backward to happier memories, the novel ensures that readers will be left with an image of Dong-ho as a full person rather than as a young boy shot down by state soldiers.
Themes
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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 dragging the older brother to the floor. When Dong-ho’s mother saw this fight between her two adult sons, she could not find it in herself to break it up. Instead, she walked on into the kitchen, making pancakes and cooking meat for breakfast.
On the one hand, Dong-ho’s mother’s refusal to intervene here shows her general sense of apathy. But on the other hand, her reaction hints that she might agree with the older brother—is the middle brother to blame for not bringing Dong-ho home that day? Or worse, does Dong-ho’s mother think she herself is at fault?
Themes
Consumed with doubt and regret, Dong-ho’s mother thinks back to the day of her youngest son’s death. Dong-ho promised to be home by six, but when 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 young members of the student militia guarding the doors refused to let them in. “Only the young can be so stubborn,” she thinks.
Interestingly, Dong-ho’s mother is the only character in the story who was an adult at the time of the Gwangju uprising. What seemed intuitive to the other central figures thus feels like youthful folly to Dong-ho’s mother. And rather than seeing the student militia’s “stubborn[ness]” as courageous conviction, she sees it as childish braggadocio.
Themes
The middle brother wanted to go inside the gym to retrieve Dong-ho, but Dong-ho’s mother refused: she couldn’t bear the thought of losing the middle brother, too. It was getting darker, and the soldiers could come from anywhere. So, insisting that Dong-ho would be home soon, Dong-ho’s mother and the middle brother walked home, tears streaming down their faces. “Why did they refuse to let me in?” Dong-ho’s mother wonders now. “When they were going to die such futile deaths, what difference could it possibly have made?”
Now, Dong-ho’s mother’s refusal to intervene in the fight between her sons makes more sense: she was the one who prohibited the middle brother from doing more to save Dong-ho. Whereas characters like Seon-ju and the narrator work to give meaning to the lives lost in the 5:18 massacre, Dong-ho’s mother sees it all as “futile.” After all, Chun stayed in power for almost another decade after the protests.
Themes
Dong-ho’s mother blames herself for inviting Jeong-mi and Jeong-dae to live with them all those years ago. She had initially loved the idea that Dong-ho would have friends his age in the house, and she loved watching Dong-ho and Jeong-dae head off to school in their matching uniforms. Later, after both children disappeared, Jeong-dae’s father came to Gwangju to look for them. He stayed in the annex of the hanok for a year, getting drunk and searching for his children even after it was clear they were no longer alive.
The image of Dong-ho and Jeong-dae in their matching school uniforms gives further weight to the symbolism of the trackpants: the very friendship that once made Dong-ho’s mother so happy ultimately led to both boy’s lives being taken.
Themes
Eventually, Dong-ho’s mother thinks, Jeong-dae’s father must have passed away from the effort of searching for his missing children. She hates herself for renting out the annex, but then she thinks of hearing Jeong-dae and Dong-ho laughing or playing badminton, and she forgives herself. For a moment, Dong-ho’s mother thinks of Jeong-mi: how pretty she was, and the sight of her walking across the courtyard “like the dreams of a previous life.”
Even though Dong-ho’s mother differs in her coping mechanisms from Jeong-dae and Jeong-mi’s father, both find the weight of the loss and memory of their children completely all-consuming. Like Seon-ju, Dong-ho’s mother knows that the line between memories and dreams (and nightmares) is porous: sometimes, it is impossible to comprehend that such tragic reality really did happen.
Themes
Dong-ho’s mother recalls the struggle it took to keep going after Dong-ho died. For a time, even just putting food in her mouth felt exhausting. Eventually, though, she ended up getting involved with other bereaved parents, organizing for the day when Chun Doo-Hwan would next set foot in Gwangju. Dong-ho’s mother felt no fear as she prepared to throw stones and protest the president—after all, what more could happen to her?
On the one hand, Dong-ho’s mother shares Eun-sook’s frustration with the idea that some bodies must continue to function while others have ceased to work. But on the other hand, Dong-ho’s mother knows that continuing to fuel her body can allow her to protest against the very forces that killed her son.
Themes
When Chun Doo-Hwan actually arrived, Dong-ho’s mother was among the rioters throwing stones and waving banners. Immediately, Dong-ho’s mother and the others were taken to jail. When a younger protestor saw them there, he burst into tears: “Even the mothers are here, too?” he asked. “What crime have they committed?” Fueled by these words, Dong-ho’s mother leapt from her chair and tears a framed picture of Chun Doo-Hwan from the wall. The glass broke, and Dong-ho’s mother got a shard in her foot.
This poignant moment suggests that when older people join a young person’s fight, they are more intentional (showing up as “the mothers,” doubling down on their actions). However, they are also more physically vulnerable (as can be seen in Dong-ho’s mother’s foot injury). The continued presence of banners, even when language is criminalized, once more points to the importance of language in protest.
Themes
To heal her foot, Dong-ho’s mother went to the hospital. While in treatment, she called her husband, instructing him to bring a banner she had made but not yet used to the following day’s protest. Barely able to walk, Dong-ho’s mother leaned on Dong-ho’s father as she shouted at Chun Doo-hwan, “you murdered my son.” After that, the mothers met often, organizing and raising funds to go to protest meetings as far away as Seoul. Even when police threw smoke grenades or tried to separate them, the mothers found their way back to each other.
As Dong-ho’s mother joins forces with the other mothers, she finds strength from a crowd just as her soon did during the 5:18 protests. And by working with the other mothers to metabolize the pain of their children’s deaths, Dong-ho’s mother’s actions suggest that protest, too, can be a form of memory: a tangible way for her to honor her son’s life.
Themes
The mothers vowed to continue their efforts forever, but when Dong-ho’s father died, Dong-ho’s mother lost steam. She both pities and envies her husband, as she wonders whether death brings reunions with lost loved ones, or only more emptiness. Now, more memories of Dong-ho come. Dong-ho’s mother remembers how he nursed from her left breast, inadvertently reshaping her bent nipple. She remembers his eager crawling and unsteady walking. And she remembers how he insisted, “I don’t like summer, but I like summer nights.” Dong-ho’s mother used to wonder if her son would be a poet.
These poetic vignettes from Dong-ho’s life allow him to exist to readers 30 years after he was killed, almost as vibrantly as he once existed to his mother. The fact that Dong-ho wanted to be a poet gives new meaning to the fact that so many of those who survived him have chosen to pay tribute to him in words, honing their prose and their testimony just as an older, writerly version of Dong-ho might have, had he lived long enough.
Themes
Early in the mornings, Dong-ho’s mother unwraps her son’s school ID and traces Dong-ho’s face with her fingers. Sometimes, Dong-ho’s mother thinks back to long summertime walks with Dong-ho. Even though it was sweltering and Dong-ho was sweating, he would insist on walking in the sun—“let’s go over there, where the flowers are blooming,” he’d say.
The death of her beloved youngest son has shaped Dong-ho’s mother’s life more than anything else. But here, she chooses to end her narrative with a continued hope in survival and growth, letting her son’s memory “bloom” on the pages just as the flowers once did in the sun.
Themes
