Failed metamorphosis, self-starvation and the innocence of anorexia: an analysis of the vegetarian

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2058030 (Table of Contents)

This thesis analyzes Han Kang’s short novel The Vegetarian with a feminist, literary and medical discourse. As I discuss the element of corporeality of metamorphosis in the novel I determine that not only are almost-transformations in the novel are “failed metamorphosis” but also they are thematic charges of Ovidian executions. By doing a comparative reading of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby: the Scrivener" I establish similar narrators and narrations to expand my observation of what makes Yeong-hye, the main character, extremely unique among narratives of anorexia. Discussing various feminist and medical approaches to anorexia, specifically to anorexia nervosa, I conclude that these do not completely fit Yeong-hye. I employ Rudolph Bell’s Holy Anorexia to read Yeonghye as a saint figure as I compare her to one of the saints Bell introduces, Catherine of Siena. In this thesis I suggest that Yeong-hye’s unique anorexia makes her a saint figure because of her obsession with innocence and the post-human way of achieving it by admiring Kang’s way of story-making.