Pens and Ink Symbol Analysis

In Human Acts, author Han Kang presents language as a powerful tool of protest and resistance—so it is perhaps a surprise that in the novel, pens and ink are almost always associated with violence. The unnamed narrator and Jin-su, both taken prisoner after the Gwangju uprising, suffer when armed guards use expensive Monami Biro pens for excruciating forms of torture. And for Eun-sook, who is working covertly to publish dissident plays, looking at the pages the state censor’s ink-roller has erased feels like being “burned.” On the one hand, then, pens and ink symbolize Chun Doo-hwan’s dictatorial efforts to silence any disagreement: he blots out protest art, rips up activists’ fliers and posters, and tortures those who speak against him until they feel “utterly devoid of anything that could be said to resemble humanity.”

But on the other hand, Chun Doo-hwan’s commitment to destroying language also reflects the power words have to create real change. Even though the actors in the play Eun-sook works on are only allowed to mouth their lines, the shapes of the words are still enough to energize an entire audience. Dong-ho’s mother, mourning her son, redraws every set of posters that Chun doo-hwan’s soldiers shred, eventually helping to unseat the dictator. And Han Kang, by concluding her novel with a focus on the writer, a fictional stand-in for Han herself, emphasizes that language continues to bring justice to the victims of state violence. After all, readers of Human Acts are encountering this story through words, thus helping to remember a historical reality that Chun Doo-hwan is now powerless to erase.