Cursed Bunny: Stories

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Stories 1-2

Stories 3-4

Stories 5-6

Stories 7-8

Stories 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Pregnancy

Content Warning: This section features discussion of gender discrimination, incest, child abuse, abortion, and ableist attitudes toward blindness.

Pregnancy recurs in several of Chung’s stories as a motif for Social Expectation as a Tool of Patriarchy. This motif is strongest in “The Embodiment,” where Young-lan’s pregnancy defines the boundaries of the story.

In “The Embodiment,” Young-lan’s pregnancy is unintended. This gives rise to expectations from medical professionals, family members, and even strangers, none of whom have Young-lan’s well-being in mind. The obstetrician, for instance, urges Young-lan to find a father for the child or else the fetus will fail to develop properly. This becomes the crux of the obstetrician’s advice, and she never suggests anything related to nutrition, a subject of fetal development that Young-lan realizes on her own. Young-lan’s family members support the quest for a father figure, which subtly undermines Young-lan’s ability to raise the child on her own as a working professional. They even go so far as to encourage her to take a leave of absence from her graduate studies to focus on dating. This is echoed in “The Head,” where the woman’s anxiety around the head is dismissed by everyone in her family from her parents to her husband. “The Head” continuously alludes to pregnancy by framing the dynamic between the woman and the head as a mother-child relationship. Though the woman rejects her label as the head’s mother, none of her family members acknowledge the head’s psychological and physical impact on the woman. This signals the normalization of that impact, hinting at the ways in which women are expected to bear the anxieties and uneasiness related to pregnancy.

Finally, some of the strangers who reach out to Young-lan only do so to exploit her. The blackmailer and Suh Woochang both see Young-lan’s pregnancy as an opportunity to increase their material wealth. In the process of contacting her, they express their misogynistic perceptions, cementing the idea that they see Young-lan and her pregnancy as means to an end, rather than an end in itself. This resonates with the story “Snare,” where the trader looks at the enforced violence between his children as the primary source of his income. When the trader’s daughter becomes pregnant by her brother, the trader’s son, the trader reasons that the only way to sustain his income is to abort his daughter’s pregnancy. He does not consider the circumstances that resulted in the pregnancy and is instead concerned with how the scandal will affect his wealth. The trader uses social expectation to guide his decisions as a patriarchal figure, perpetuating the abuse of his daughter.

Blindness

In Chung’s collection, blindness is treated as a symbol for both willful ignorance and the ignorance that is enforced on others. Characters who have blindness or are unable to see certain elements of the world around them or have been prevented from learning crucial information that would affect their circumstances or their agency.

In “The Frozen Finger,” Teacher Lee is unable to see the figure who helps her out of the car wreck. This heightens the unreliability of the voice, but Teacher Lee chooses to look past it because of the impact of the car accident that nearly killed her. She can hardly see anything around her, affirming her belief that her perception has been affected. It is only when Teacher Lee registers the inconsistencies in the voice’s stories of Teacher Choi that she realizes the voice’s unreliability.

In “Ruler of the Winds and Sands,” the prince’s blindness foreshadows the greed he has inherited from his father, the desert king. The prince’s blindness initially earns the princess’s empathy, but when she lifts the curse, causing his blindness to disappear, he reveals his true nature. This disillusions the princess and causes her to speak against him and his father.

On the other hand, the sister in “Scars” is ironically the only person in her village who sees the truth of her circumstances, though she also has blindness. Where the other villagers treat the youth cruelly, the sister recognizes how her blindness led to the youth’s suffering. She is the only one to express her remorse to the youth, setting her apart from her brother and the bald man, who responded to his return with more violence. Their violence represents their attempt to bury the truth of their complicity.

Ghosts

Ghosts recur in Chung’s collection as a symbol for the truths buried in the past. This idea is evident as early as “Cursed Bunny,” where the grandfather’s ghost visits the narrator to tell the story that led to his disappearance from the family. As much as the narrator wants to find out how their grandfather died, they also acknowledge the possibility that learning the truth may cause the ghost to disappear. For them, the tension of ambiguity is the cost of their grandfather’s presence.

In “Snare,” the ghost of the daughter similarly speaks truth to power by haunting her father, as well as the servants in his house. The allure of the golden fog around her ghost is meant to resonate with the allure of the gold that led the trader to abuse his children. When the servants enter the fog, they are punished by the terrifying image of the daughter’s ghost. This scares the servants away, allowing the story of the trader’s haunting to spread.

In “Reunion,” the Polish man can see ghosts, which isolates him from his family. His mother believes that his ability is a demonic sign, prompting her to abuse him. On the other hand, his ability to see those who have died resonates with his grandfather’s trauma as a Holocaust survivor. The narrator of the story is the only other person who shares the Polish man’s ability, signaling her empathy for him as someone tied to the past. Unlike the Polish man’s ex-fiancée, the narrator understands how the man’s traumas, his ability to see the past, and his desire to be tied up during sex are all inextricably linked.