[b]Han Kang
Why, is it such a bad thing to die?[/b]
My guess: It depends on who you ask.
Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?
Why don’t we just keep this our own little secret.
Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness.
On the other hand, we will – someday – have all of eternity not to think about it.
Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, and thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time.
That’s how it can work alright.
She’s a good woman, he thought. The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive.
Meaning yours better be hers.
She was no longer able to cope with all that her sister reminded her of. She’d been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross, unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled Yeong-hye to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind, still a prisoner. And before Yeong-hye had broken those bars, she’d never even known they were there.
Wow, how many of us can say we never even knew the bars were there?