Personal View of 'Caring Plants'(Pyun Hye-Gyeong)

Title: Caring for Plants

Rate: 9.5/10

    Mr. Garrioch, my teacher and maybe the only reader of my poor blog, said that 'always good short stories give us a vagueness.' Then, I think that Caring for Plants is the perfect example of his sentence,

    Ohgi is a teacher, and he lives with his wife. He looks a perfectly normal person before he had an accident and lose his wife and legs. Even though his legs were not cut off, he cannot walk well. After the accident, his mother-in-law cares for him. However, Ohgi cannot relieve himself because the actions of his mother-in-law look very weird. She digs a big hole and covers it up with something in the garden that Ohgi's wife valued when she lived. Then, the number of pills that she gives to Ohgi increased from 6 to 8.

    It is a fact that his mother-in-law looks weird. However, readers should know that the speaker of this story is not reliable. In an objective view, the actions of the mother-in-law can be justified. The pills? Doctors can increase the number of pills that he takes. The hole? She may want to plant a big tree. Here is the reason why this book is interesting; Readers cannot believe anyone, even the speaker. 

    Also, this can be linked to the theme; The way modern people treat disabled people. In Franz Kafka, the Metamorphosis, a breadwinner becomes a bug, and he is treated as a nuisance. In the end, he was killed by the apple that his child threw. It is similar to Ohgi. He was a person who earned money, but he became a person who cannot move if there is any help. Then, the fact that he becomes a decent person to die in a day may make him more suspicious. 

    It is really interesting that it can be read from different perspectives. Of course, his mother-in-law really tried to kill him. However, no one can know the truth. It seems to stimulate imagination because it has different themes in each point of view.