Han Kang received the 2016 International Booker Prize for vegetarian, which chronicles a woman’s fall into madness as she refuses meat and defies the patriarchal rigidity of South Korean culture. This whimsical novel is very different but similar in its focus on human vulnerability. Much of this takes place in a classroom in Seoul, South Korea, where an unnamed student and her unnamed ancient Greek teacher suffer severe disabilities.
The teacher is blind and has visual impairment for about a year. His student lost her mother six months ago and recently lost custody of her eight-year-old son. Under this double burden, she became mute.
This is not an isolated case; It happened to her once when she was a teenager. The power of the words struck her so much that she lost the ability to pronounce them: “The most painful thing was how terribly clear the words sounded when she opened her mouth and threw them out one by one.” This time learning French brought her back to her language; this time she hopes the ancient Greek will work.
Both main characters are obsessed with language and literature. The student was a poetess and writer, but her creative abilities let her down, as did her voice. The teacher, on the other hand, is a fan of the surrealist genius Jorge Luis Borges, who also went blind in adulthood. But his main interest is ancient Greek, which, in his opinion, represents the pinnacle of the development of the Western language due to its accuracy and brevity.
Both main characters are also isolated. The teacher recently returned to Korea from Germany, where she spent most of her adult life, and the student lives alone and is haunted by thoughts of her lost son. Kang switches between teacher and student perspectives as an unspoken relationship develops between the two.
Greek lessonsThe theme is the material of classical tragedy. It reveals the reality that there are parts of the human experience that language cannot touch; above all, that he cannot deal with loss so easily.
The teacher seeks solace in the ancient philosophy that accompanies the ancient language he loves, and it is no coincidence that the usual text of his class is by Plato. He is morbidly preoccupied with perfect Platonic forms that lie outside the visible world. If no sighted person ever sees them, they have little to lose by going blind.
Now the student realized how much her personality is connected with the language. Without them, she feels her self-esteem plummet along with her self-esteem.
This is a complex literary work. The story is often fragmentary, and at times Kahn turns into poetry, exploring inexpressible ideas and feelings.
Still Greek lessons It’s definitely worth it. The elusive aspects of humanity are the most difficult to understand, but also the most compelling. Kang uses his characters’ traumas as keys to tapping into their inner worlds before leading us around them with relentless intensity.
As the teacher says: “Beauty, difficulty and nobility were the concepts of the ancient Greeks, which were not yet divided.” Kang’s novel invariably engages the reader as he looks at what happens when language is confronted with fragility and grief.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.