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A blue birthmark common to people of Asian descent. It often disappears before a person turns five years old and almost always before puberty. In The Vegetarian, the brother-in-law becomes obsessed with the fact that Yeong-hye still has her Mongolian mark as an adult, and it is the image of the mark on her buttocks which inspires the images of naked men and women painted in flowers.
Mongolian Mark Quotes in The Vegetarian
The The Vegetarian quotes below are all either spoken by Mongolian Mark or refer to Mongolian Mark. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2: Mongolian Mark
Quotes
In precisely that moment he was struck by the image of a blue flower on a woman’s buttocks, its petals opening outward. In his mind, the fact that his sister-in-law still had a Mongolian mark on her buttocks became inexplicably bound up with the image of men and women having sex, their naked bodies completely covered with painted flowers. The causality linking these two things was so clear, so obvious, as to be somehow beyond comprehension, and thus it became etched into his mind.
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He held her at the waist and stroked the mark, wishing that he could share it with her, that it could be seared onto his skin like a brand. I want to swallow you, have you melt into me and flow through my veins.
“Will the dreams stop now?" she muttered, her voice barely audible.
“Dreams? Ah, the face…that's right, you said it was a face, no?” he said, feeling drowsiness slowly creep through his body. “What kind of face? Whose face?”
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Mongolian Mark Term Timeline in The Vegetarian
The timeline below shows where the term Mongolian Mark appears in The Vegetarian. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Mongolian Mark
...come to the brother-in-law from a chance conversation: he had noted Ji-woo still had a Mongolian mark while giving him a bath. In-hye had remarked that Yeong-hye still had a Mongolian mark...
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...she does. He examines her body, noting that she does in fact still have the Mongolian mark . He thinks with surprise that there isn’t anything sexual about it, that its blue-green...
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...through the next day, cutting the tapes into a five-minute movie that he labels “ Mongolian Mark 1.” He thinks about the next movie he wants to make, with a painted man...
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As dawn approaches, the brother-in-law licks Yeong-hye’s Mongolian mark . He thinks that he wants to swallow Yeong-hye. She asks if her dreams will...
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