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A review by alexiacambaling
Human Acts by Han Kang
5.0
Content warning/s: Police brutality; state-sponsored violence
Contains spoilers.
This is one of the most gut-wrenching, yet beautiful books I’ve ever read. It is at once, both familiar and yet so different and in every page, you could feel the weight of history, that sense of loss that permeates every page. What a stunning, yet horrifying book. Human Acts by Han Kang is never an easy read, but a worthwhile one from beginning to end. It is like a series of inter-connected stories taking place in different years revolving around a historical event known as the Gwangju Uprising.
The book begins with bodies. A young boy helps prepare bodies of victims for burial, alternately hoping that his friend and his sister are alive or that they’d find the bodies. This story is told in the second-person which is used to stunning effect. The writing is beautiful, but painful.
He also asks himself, why sing the national anthem for those killed by soldiers, why drape the coffins of victims of state-sponsored violence with flags? In the time period when this book was written, my country also experienced Martial Law under a dictator. Like in the events depicted in this book, there was also state-sponsored violence, and the disappearance of many activists. I thought to myself that there is a familiarity in this book, this is what the weight of history feels like. To answer the boy’s question, he was told by the people he was helping with that what the soldiers did was unlawful, that they weren’t the nation. The people they were preparing for burial weren’t murdered by the nation.
This was admittedly a difficult point for me to grasp because at the time I was reading it, I thought that maybe they were trying to convince themselves that their country, the country that they believed in, wouldn’t do this. Maybe I’m just projecting my own biases here, but I do understand that feeling. We want to believe in our country, that our nation is good and will do good by the people living in it. Those who face a different reality, those who see the other side, the brutality, their stories are depicted here.
From the ending of the first story, the book never lets up. The second point of view we encounter is Jeong-dae, the friend Dong-Ho was looking for. He was already dead and his story is told in the first person, sometimes addressing Dong-ho in the second person. He was dead and his soul lingers, unable to move on while his body lies wherever the soldiers had taken it. He was looking for his sister, already knowing her fate.
The rest of the stories are told in different points of views, from an editor who had worked with Dong-ho to prepare and identify the bodies, to a prisoner who was there that day and survived, to an ex-factory worker girl who suffered torture as an activist. The last story and one of the saddest, was Dong-ho’s mother. Various literary devices were employed so that each chapter has a different style, lending to a distinctness in each voice. In the background of these stories, Dong-ho serves as a lingering presence.
There is a sense of reckoning in this book, a sense of the pain of memory, of remembering. Many of the characters show signs of PTSD and survivor’s guilt. All of them are dealing with the trauma associated with the uprising, an event which had happened because of a genuine desire for democracy, to have a say in their country’s future, and by extension, their future. Instead, these characters saw their once-bright and promising futures curtailed, wracked by the pain of what happened years prior, never fully getting over it, and having to deal with the trauma each in their own way. It deals a lot with interiority, exploring the characters’ psyche in an unrelenting manner, and shows in stark detail the ways they have been affected by the Gwangju Uprising.
This is a very difficult book to read in terms of subject matter and for some, it can be triggering. It is painful, sad, and doesn’t offer much in the way of clear answers, but it is an excellent book. I would highly recommend it and I give it five stars, but I won’t recommend it lightly. It’s not for everybody and the graphic depictions of state-sponsored violence can be triggering for some people.
Contains spoilers.
This is one of the most gut-wrenching, yet beautiful books I’ve ever read. It is at once, both familiar and yet so different and in every page, you could feel the weight of history, that sense of loss that permeates every page. What a stunning, yet horrifying book. Human Acts by Han Kang is never an easy read, but a worthwhile one from beginning to end. It is like a series of inter-connected stories taking place in different years revolving around a historical event known as the Gwangju Uprising.
The book begins with bodies. A young boy helps prepare bodies of victims for burial, alternately hoping that his friend and his sister are alive or that they’d find the bodies. This story is told in the second-person which is used to stunning effect. The writing is beautiful, but painful.
He also asks himself, why sing the national anthem for those killed by soldiers, why drape the coffins of victims of state-sponsored violence with flags? In the time period when this book was written, my country also experienced Martial Law under a dictator. Like in the events depicted in this book, there was also state-sponsored violence, and the disappearance of many activists. I thought to myself that there is a familiarity in this book, this is what the weight of history feels like. To answer the boy’s question, he was told by the people he was helping with that what the soldiers did was unlawful, that they weren’t the nation. The people they were preparing for burial weren’t murdered by the nation.
This was admittedly a difficult point for me to grasp because at the time I was reading it, I thought that maybe they were trying to convince themselves that their country, the country that they believed in, wouldn’t do this. Maybe I’m just projecting my own biases here, but I do understand that feeling. We want to believe in our country, that our nation is good and will do good by the people living in it. Those who face a different reality, those who see the other side, the brutality, their stories are depicted here.
From the ending of the first story, the book never lets up. The second point of view we encounter is Jeong-dae, the friend Dong-Ho was looking for. He was already dead and his story is told in the first person, sometimes addressing Dong-ho in the second person. He was dead and his soul lingers, unable to move on while his body lies wherever the soldiers had taken it. He was looking for his sister, already knowing her fate.
The rest of the stories are told in different points of views, from an editor who had worked with Dong-ho to prepare and identify the bodies, to a prisoner who was there that day and survived, to an ex-factory worker girl who suffered torture as an activist. The last story and one of the saddest, was Dong-ho’s mother. Various literary devices were employed so that each chapter has a different style, lending to a distinctness in each voice. In the background of these stories, Dong-ho serves as a lingering presence.
There is a sense of reckoning in this book, a sense of the pain of memory, of remembering. Many of the characters show signs of PTSD and survivor’s guilt. All of them are dealing with the trauma associated with the uprising, an event which had happened because of a genuine desire for democracy, to have a say in their country’s future, and by extension, their future. Instead, these characters saw their once-bright and promising futures curtailed, wracked by the pain of what happened years prior, never fully getting over it, and having to deal with the trauma each in their own way. It deals a lot with interiority, exploring the characters’ psyche in an unrelenting manner, and shows in stark detail the ways they have been affected by the Gwangju Uprising.
This is a very difficult book to read in terms of subject matter and for some, it can be triggering. It is painful, sad, and doesn’t offer much in the way of clear answers, but it is an excellent book. I would highly recommend it and I give it five stars, but I won’t recommend it lightly. It’s not for everybody and the graphic depictions of state-sponsored violence can be triggering for some people.