Life was exceedingly vulnerable, I realized. The flesh, organs, bones, breaths passing before my eyes held within them the potential to snap, to cease—so easily, and by a single decision.
This quote emphasizes how deeply over the edge Kyungha's research concerning historical massacres sent her. As in many of her novels, Han emphasizes the dual human capacities for violence and dignity. Kyungha focuses a great deal on how material and abstract realities influence each other. The decision she outlines in this quote could refer to a desire to commit suicide or to a murderous impulse to kill another person.
Was rousing such agonizing pain the only way to keep the threads of nerves intact?
This quote has both literal and metaphorical meanings. To successfully reattach Inseon's severed fingers, medical staff have to wound the fingers every three minutes for the next three weeks. This causes excruciating pain that Inseon has no choice but to bear if she wants to recover the use of her fingers. In her typical questioning style, Kyungha wonders if there is no alternative. Another layer of this question asks about Kyungha's own intense nervous suffering and inability to cope with the fragility of life.
As ever, pain isolates me. I am trapped in the torturous moments my own body generates second by second. I am dislodged from the time prior to pain, from the world of the not-ill.
Chronic pain isolates Kyungha and temporarily dislocates her from the rest of the world. Without medicine to stave off her symptoms, Kyungha cannot hold off the onslaught of pain that has plagued her on and off for years.
There are hardly any rivers or creeks on this volcanic island, and only occasionally during heavy rains or heavy snow do flowing streams appear. The village used to be divided along the border of this ephemeral stream, Inseon once told me on a walk. A cluster of forty houses, give or take, had stood on the other side, and when the evacuation orders went out in 1948, they were all set on fire, the people in them slaughtered, the village incinerated.
Kyungha describes the physical outcome of the destruction that took place on Jeju in the late 1940s. The US-backed Korean military collectively punished Jeju residents through indiscriminate killings, arrests without due process, and (as shown in this quote) the destruction of homes. Their goal was to exterminate communism on the island, but in the process, they killed an estimated 30,000 people.
My every pain and joy, all my deep-rooted sorrows and loves, shine, not as an amalgam but as a whole comprised of distinct singularities, glowing together as one giant nebula.
Just as multiple timelines exist simultaneously throughout the novel, Kyungha's own life experiences (comprised of all her pain and joy) unfurl and glow before her. These multiplicities reflect the disorienting way in which reality functions. Han portrays the whole rather than the temporary parts of Kyungha's life.
A charged hush surrounds the small body, as if it had been pulsing with blood mere moments ago. As I look down, I get the sense that this severed life is pecking at my chest, trying to tear its way in. I feel its desire to burrow inside my heart, to dwell there for as long as that organ goes on beating.
Kyungha appears to have arrived too late on her quixotic mission to save Inseon's bird, Ama. The "charged hush" that Kyungha describes heightens the tension because it suggests that had she arrived "mere moments ago," she could have prevented the death. Despite not having a close bond with Ama, Kyungha feels deeply touched by the bird's death.
If Inseon had come to me as a spirit, that would mean I was alive, and if Inseon was alive, that would mean I was the apparition. Could the same warmth be spreading through both our bodies at once?
Here, Kyungha questions reality as she encounters Inseon's apparition on Jeju Island since she just visited Inseon at a hospital in Seoul. Throughout We Do Not Part, Han emphasizes physical and material phenomena as well as more abstract occurrences like memories and imagination. In this quote, the author blends her focus on physical and immaterial realities.
Or could it be that we never actually communicated? Was he only ever a bird? Was I only ever a human in the end?
Inseon contemplates her interactions with her bird, Ami. This concern with nature and connection appears throughout the novel, and both Inseon and Kyungha question their tenuous bonds to the world. For this reason, both women lead mostly isolated lives. Once her mother died, Inseon's primary relationships were between herself and her birds, which is why she asks Kyungha to go to such great lengths to save Ama.
I realize the movement of my finger and eyes over the vertical writing more or less matches the pace at which I usually read out or silently mouth the words of a text. This might explain the presence I detect emanating from the text, like the faintest of voices.
Kyungha examines Inseon's research about the massacres that took place on Jeju in the late 1940s and the ongoing efforts to uncover the truth about what happened. Reading her friend's work, she feels the past come to life in the present, which is shown by the faint voices coming from the text.
In lieu of an answer, I placed my hand over the photo of the bones. Over people who no longer had eyes or tongues. Over people whose organs and muscles had rotted away. Over what was no longer human—no. Over what remained human even now.
Kyungha and Inseon are capable of communicating nonverbally through gestures, thoughts, and memories. In this quote, Han demonstrates how the definition of "human" is malleable. Kyungha ultimately insists on the humanity of those murdered in state-sanctioned massacres, which is in direct opposition to the dehumanization that allowed such atrocities to happen in the first place.
