Original scientific paper
Experiences and Memories of Violence in Literary Works of Han Kang: A Comparison with the Diary of Young Girl
Sang Hun Kim
; Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul
Abstract
The aim of the article is to compare Anne Frank’s The Diary of Young Girl with two novels, Human Acts and Vegetarian, both by the Korean female author Han Kang. Han Kang, who was born and raised in Gwangju in 1970 and left it in January 1980, could not witness the tragedy of the Gwangju uprising firsthand. Yet she is known as the “Daughter of Gwangju,” who spoke about the tragedy as an adult writing independent memory literature. She admitted to the horrors of the tragedy, saying that she heard the full account of the tragedy in Gwangju as a “story” and has seen it in a “photo book” her father saved two years after the incident. A literary production of such indirect experience culminated in the publication of Human Acts in 2014. Compared to the Vegetarian trilogy, published in 2007, it is difficult to find a link to Human Acts in terms of an epic context. This is because Vegetarian lacks a realistic description of the Gwangju tragedy. Vegetarian, however, is considered in this argument to be an epic extension of Human Acts because it uses the aftermath of visible violence that is homogeneous to the Gwangju tragedy as the motif of the novel. Additionally, it represents the clash with the “daily fascism,” which has spread like chaos through micro-violence.
Keywords
experiences and memories of violence; epic structure; reality of madness; reality of violence; narrative structure
Hrčak ID:
278149
URI
Publication date:
27.5.2022.
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