Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Bản Chất Của Người

"After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, so these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine. These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine. These lungs that once held your breath became a shrine."

In Human Acts, Han Kang paints a haunting portrait of the emotional aftermath of a massacre. Weaved throughout the book are meditations on grief, courage, cruelty, trauma, humanity, and survivor's guilt. Dong-ho, the story's focal point, represents the cruelest casualties of war: just a brave young person motivated by a sense of duty and compassion.

Throughout Human Acts, Han Kang uses repetition to a devastating effect. Characters who were physically tortured all experience the same disassociation from their physical bodies, the same survivor's guilt, the same suicidal ideation. Additionally, by addressing trauma from multiple points of view, Kang masterfully demonstrates the collective nature of grief and the lasting impact of brutality on a single community.

This book broke my heart. Human Acts is an unforgettable fictionalized account of events that were all too real to so many South Koreans. Much of the content featured in this book is both shocking and horrific - but clearly that is the point. This book isn't another glamorized war story. No, it's the exact opposite: a realistic portrayal of suffering with no happy ending. Sometimes humankind is capable of horrible acts, end of story.

Content Warnings

lookaclara's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

merle98's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Content Warnings

luman's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

A heartache put into prose that deserves to be heard, some places gave me goosebumps, some caused my eyes to feel heavy with the feeling of brimming tears that never really came and just sunk deep into my heart.
I don't feel like I can comment much on this as it is souch a delicate story but I loved everything about the way it was handled: the intertwined different persepctives that connected in one way or another, the usage of 1st person and lastly, the inclution of the writer's experience as well.
In some ways, I could relate these events to Lithuania's own history and the writer's experiences to my own feelings of wanting to keep the memory of all thes brave people alive and the desperate wishing to be able to go back in time and make the suffering go away, to protect everyone somehow or at least let them know that it will all not go in vain.

All in all, I am getting more and more sucked into this topic and also am planning on checking out other Han Kang's works as well, if this was anything to go by.

Content Warnings