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This essay examines how Han Kang, in The Vegetarian, explores the banality of violence through the inner turmoil of Yeong-hye and In-hye, and further envisions their potential for transformation and escape. The concept of the "banality of violence," adapted from Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil," illuminates their internal psycho-somatic violence, manifested as anorexia nervosa (a fear of meat or animality), aggression, and self-torment. Drawing on Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalytic thought, this essay discusses the unconscious or repressed traumatic memory (or dream), its uncanny and retroactively belated return, and the resulting pain, diverse symptoms, alienation, separation, subjectivation, and reconstitution of desire. This framework helps to elucidate not only Han's central concern that violence is pervasive and normalized in daily life, but also her earnest exploration of humanity's capacity to confront or reject it. The two sisters, arguably, become aware of their inner violence as inextricably linked to patriarchal familial and societal violence, and they desperately attempt to escape its oppressive grip. This transition in their subjectivity and desire is visualized in Yeong-hye's eventual identification with a tree, signifying a complete withdrawal from the patriarchal-symbolic domain, and in In-hye's persistent gaze toward a hawk-like blackbird, implying her ongoing resistance within that domain.

Han Kang, <The Vegetarian>, banality of violence, subjectivation, desire, flight

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