Author: Sonali Raina, Dr Pardeep Kumar

Abstract: Han Kang’s The Vegetarian presents Yeong-hye’s refusal of meat as the beginning of a disturbance in identity. The decision follows violent dreams and develops into a rejection of familial authority, sexual possession, and the human body. This paper examines Yeong-hye’s transformation through C. G. Jung’s concepts of the unconscious, persona, shadow, and individuation. It argues that the novel represents not the completion of individuation but its crisis. The dreams bring repressed material into consciousness, while the body becomes the medium through which that material resists a socially imposed identity. The violence directed against Yeong-hye reveals that the Shadow cannot be located solely within the psyche; it is also projected through familial and social structures. Her identification with vegetal existence marks the point at which differentiation from the persona becomes a rejection of human subjectivity. The novel complicates Jungian individuation by presenting self-realization as an unresolved movement between resistance, fragmentation, and disappearance.

Keywords: dreams, individuation, persona, shadow, vegetal identity

Article Info: Received: 27 May 2026; Received in revised form: 22 Jun 2026; Accepted: 25 Jun 2026; Available online: 30 Jun 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.113.97