“It wasn’t so much eating meat that Eun-sook disliked; what really turned her stomach was having to watch it cook on the hot plate. When the blood and juices rose to the surface she had to look away. When a fish was being griddled with the head still attached. That moment when moisture formed on the frozen eyeballs as they thawed in the pan, when a watery fluid flecked with grey scum dribbled out of its gaping mouth, that moment which always seemed to her as though the dead fish was trying to say something. She always had to avert her eyes.
‘So then, what shall it be? What would you like to eat, Miss Kim?’ Yoon chose that moment to pipe up.
‘You’ll bend our ears for us if we go somewhere expensive and run up a huge
bill. Let’s go to that cafe we went to last time.’
With Yoon making three the office would be empty, so they locked the door
behind them before walking up to the cafe by the junction. It was next door to the barbecue place the boss had originally suggested; a fairly ramshackle place, where homestyle boiled rice was dished up by a proprietor whose summer flip- flops exposed a toenail black with rot, while in winter she shuffled around with grubby socks stuffed into tatty old snow boots.
As they were finishing their meal, the boss turned to Eun-sook. ‘Shall I stop by the censor’s office tomorrow?’
‘That’s always been my job ...’
‘Well, there was a lot of hassle yesterday; I’m just sorry you had to be involved in that.’ She looked across at him, pondering his words. How had he contrived to come out of there unharmed? By sticking only to what were, strictly speaking, the facts? Kim Eun-sook is the editor in charge. The two of them met at the bakery by Cheonggye stream and went through the manuscript proofs. That’s all I know. He’d stuck to the facts, nothing wrong with that; but was that bitter thing called conscience quietly needling away inside him? ‘It’s always been my job,’ Eun-sook repeated, but firmer this time. She attempted a smile but the pain rendered it a sorry affair, and she twisted away to save the boss from being troubled by the sight of her swollen cheek.”
Analysis: Kang utilizes descriptive language as well as imagery to describe Eun-sook’s true feelings towards meat. “That moment which always seemed to her as though the dead fish was trying to say something.” Kang’s use of personification represent the way Eun-sook’s trauma follows as she thinks of dead people who has lost their voice as they were brutally murdered by the soldiers. She compares this to the fish when showing eun-sook feelings as if the dead fish wants justice and did not deserve to die by unfair violence the same way people in Gwangju had died.
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