This paper attempts a comparative analysis of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) and the Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007). Though separated by spatiotemporal boundary, they end up coinciding upon the thematic ground of alienation, bodily resistance and social oppression. The changes both Gregor Samsa and Yeong-hye experience, like the former is turned into an insect, the latter into a vegetal creature are metaphors of their alienation to their oppressive institutions (the capitalist family and the patriarchal household respectively). This paper explores the manifestations of alienation, internally and externally, making the body a rebellious site and using violence and control as instruments to establish conformity in the family and society. The analysis also questions the indeterminate results of change, the death of Gregor as a tragic lack of erasure and the vegetal transformation of Yeong-hye as a potential spiritual release. Placing the two texts in their cultural contexts, like early twentieth-century Europe (characterized by industrial alienation) and modern South Korea (characterized by gender hierarchies and modern surveillance), the present study believes that Kafka and Han Kang use bodily metamorphosis as a narrative technique to reveal the ineffectiveness of modernity and the possibility of resistance on the base of embodied otherness.
Mishra et al. (Fri,) studied this question.