Misunderstanding, Isolation, and Madness Theme Analysis

Throughout the novel, characters try to grasp each other’s drives, particularly Yeong-hye’s decisions and the brother-in-law’s motives. Characters are constantly attempting to understand what others might be thinking and feeling, but they are often unsuccessful, and as a result feel isolated from one another. Han sketches a complicated relationship among this lack of understanding, isolation, and madness. Both Yeong-hye and the brother-in-law are misunderstood and labeled as crazy by those around them, but it’s actually this ostracization that causes them to go mad. The novel thus argues that misunderstanding tends to lead to isolation and, in turn, causes people to construct fantasy worlds and escape reality, spurring them to devolve into the very madness that others suspected was already there.

The idea that lack of understanding can lead to others labeling a person mad is seen most clearly in Yeong-hye, as she makes decisions that are utterly incomprehensible to Mr. Cheong, In-hye, and Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law. Each of them comments on the fact that they cannot possibly understand Yeong-hye’s decisions, and frequently label her as insane due to this fact. At the beginning of the novel, when Yeong-hye first starts to throw away the meat in their home, Mr. Cheong yells at her, “You’re insane!” At this juncture, the worst that Yeong-hye has done is simply telling her husband that she doesn’t want to cook or eat meat anymore. Yet Mr. Cheong views this only from his own perspective, and seems unable or unwilling to understand what might have caused Yeong-hye to act this way. Thus, he labels her insane due to his own lack of comprehension. Mr. Cheong’s declaration enables others to understand Yeong-hye in the same way, as he alerts her family that she is acting strangely. This devolves into a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy: the more Yeong-hye’s family tries to tell her that she is acting absurd, the more drastically she acts. When Yeong-hye starts refusing to eat altogether, In-hye starts to view her sister “like a total stranger,” and tells her, “You’re actually insane.” This lack of recognition of her sister’s thoughts and actions is what drives her to label her Yeong-hye as mad. Yeong-hye acknowledges the fact that other people don’t recognize her thoughts, and this is why people treat her so unkindly. When she tries to explain what’s wrong, she tells In-hye that “No one can understand me…the doctors, the nurses, they're all the same…they don't even try to understand…they just force me to take medication, and stab me with needles.” She sees that the doctors don’t understand her, and that’s why they are treating her as if she has no agency and is mentally ill. Granted, Yeong-hye’s self-harm and refusal to eat are extreme actions, but the fact that she feels like the doctors aren’t attempting to understand the root cause of her troubles only makes her feel more isolated and drives her to further radical action.

The relationship between the brother-in-law and In-hye is similarly filled with isolation and lack of understanding, and In-hye’s inability to recognize his thoughts and motivations is what ultimately leads her to believe that he is mad as well. Han makes a point of establishing the relationship between In-hye and her husband as an unhappy one. When the brother-in-law arrives home late one night, Han describes how he examines In-hye’s face “the way one might look at a complete stranger.” This strangeness between them is significant, as it appears that they have no way of understanding each other’s thoughts and feelings. In-hye recognizes this as well. She wonders, “had she ever really understood her husband's true nature, bound up as it was with that seemingly impenetrable silence?” This lack of understanding in their relationship is what causes the brother-in-law to seek fulfillment in his fantasies and eventual affair with Yeong-hye, and is ultimately why In-hye labels him mad and calls emergency services on him—even though it is possible that Yeong-hye might be perfectly aware and willing in parts of the affair. As a result, the brother-in-law tries to throw himself off the railing, proving how an assumption of madness can sometimes be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Ultimately, In-hye herself has a tenuous relationship with sanity at the end of the book because she, too, feels isolated and as though no one understands her. In-hye relays a story about how her husband had goaded her into sex after coming home very late one evening, and the next morning she wanted to “stab herself in the eyes with her chopsticks, or pour the boiling water from the kettle over her head.” The lack of connection she has with her husband only becomes fodder for her own violent and self-destructive impulses. In-hye also describes the “pain and insomnia” she experiences from having to care for Yeong-hye, but which no one else seems to understand. She feels herself pulled in by Yeong-hye’s own madness, thinking “If it hadn't been for Ji-woo— if it hadn't been for the sense of responsibility she felt toward him—perhaps she too might have relinquished her grip on that thread,” meaning the thread of sanity and reality. Thus, In-hye’s desire to connect with her sister and to find comfort, almost drives her to share in her sister’s madness.

The Vegetarian ultimately begs the question of whether it is possible to truly know another person’s feelings. Even among characters who are supposed to know each other very well—namely, spouses and siblings—often fail to conceive of one another’s perspectives. These failings not only lead to them falsely labeling one another as insane, but is ironically what drives one another to insanity. Thus, the book argues that anyone can be steps away from madness when their feelings of being misunderstood become insurmountable.