Summary
Jeong-dae describes how the soldiers mechanically pile up the bodies of all those they killed, including him. As the soldiers transport the bodies, Jeong-dae clings desperately to his body, determined to see where it will end up. They arrive at a military compound, and the soldiers stack the bodies in a clearing.
Later, Jeong-dae encounters other souls, feeling their incorporeal presence rather than exchanging words. He thinks of how Dong-ho was with him until his death. When Jeong-dae attempts to look around for Dong-ho, he finds himself tethered to his body. Feelings of fear and loneliness overtake Jeong-dae as he realizes that he is alone among the decomposing bodies of strangers. His distress increases once he understands that his sister also died.
To comfort himself, Jeong-dae runs through some of his best memories of times with his sister and Dong-ho. After several days pass, the soldiers finally finish piling up bodies and set a massive fire. As Jeong-dae's body loses its magnetic grip on his soul, he considers where to go next. He decides to go home and look for Dong-ho and his sister. Suddenly, Jeong-dae senses a mass death occurring, and he knows that Dong-ho has died. In the dark city, there is only one distant point of light where the murders are taking place. Jeong-dae thinks of going but finds himself unable to move.
Analysis
Chapter 2 is written in first person singular, but it begins in first person collective (a perspective that uses the pronouns "we," "us," and "ours"). The title of the chapter is "The Boy's Friend," implying that this perspective belongs to Jeong-dae, who was Dong-ho's best friend. The original Korean title of this chapter translates to "Black Breath." In the first chapter, Dong-ho presents the false mystery of his friend's whereabouts (false because Dong-ho actually witnessed Jeong-dae's death). Additionally, Dong-ho wonders repeatedly what happens to the relationship between a person's body and soul upon death. This second chapter deals with that question by showing Jeong-dae's postmortem point of view. He clinically observes the blood draining from his body as the soldiers pile him and others in the back of a military truck.
Jeong-dae continues to have a presence after death despite being severed from his body. Whereas Dong-ho focused on the language of dead bodies, Jeong-dae illuminates the experience of a person's vital energy (referred to in the book as "soul") after death. This can be seen in the description of "that breath-soft slip of incorporeal something, that faceless shadow, lacking even language, now, to give it body." Here, life and language are presented as inseparable, which is why the souls have no language. Jeong-dae is prevented from encountering other souls by some kind of barrier, suggesting an intense solitude after death.
Jeong-dae tries and fails to seek comfort in nature. Rather than have a watchful and comforting presence, the moon overhead is "nothing more than a huge, desolate lump of rock, utterly inert." This sense of desolation is worsened when Jeong-dae realizes that Dong-ho is not there, and that he is in fact alone among strangers. When the soldiers bring in more bodies, Jeong-dae feels sad upon seeing the care someone clearly took with one in particular. The title of the novel, Human Acts, refers to loving acts of care as much as it does to horrific deeds like murder.
Throughout the novel, time moves in a nonchronological way. Jeong-dae experiences himself not as a fifteen-year-old, but simultaneously as something older and timeless. When he burns with questions about how he and his sister came to die, he feels a more solid sense of himself. Determined to find his sister, Jeong-dae wonders if physical space and travel will be of consequence. The main issue that concerns him is how he and his sister will recognize each other's souls.
Once the tower of bodies begins to rot, Jeong-dae feels an intense hatred and shame for his body. The soldiers brutalized these bodies, tossing them there "like lumps of meat," but it is Jeong-dae (and not the perpetrators) who bears the burden of shame. The image of the tower of bodies resembling a "many-legged monster" emphasizes the process of dehumanization. Despite his shame, Jeong-dae's thoughts trace the line of the bullet that killed him back to the person who "gave the order to fire."
