The dog meat was not what she was truly forced to consume; it was the patriarchal system she was forced to breathe within. This system neither allowed her to live the life she desired nor allowed her to choose the path of death. All she was permitted was to carry the blame for trying to break the chain that bound her and for simply being who she was.

The greatest burden of blame she carried was the dog that died because of her. It died bleeding from its mouth, staring at her as if accusing her of its painful departure from the world. The question remains: did it really die because of her, or was it also a victim of the same system? The same system that made her run, just as the dog was made to run after the motorcycle by her father. A run that eventually ended with blood on both their mouths and eyes that sought to blame someone else.
The irony lay in the fact that she had to meet the same fate as that dog. Little did she know that, just as the dog was forced to run behind the motorcycle by her father, this would someday become the reality of her life. She was forced to keep running under the chain of patriarchy her entire life. Like the dog, she was neither allowed to stop nor allowed to die in peace. There was no fear of death within her, yet she was not allowed to die. When she came close to death, bleeding from her mouth, an ending similar to the dog’s, she stared at her sister as if it were her fault that she had ended up like that.

The habit of placing blame on others is a natural human behaviour. If we look at the novel by Han Kang, The Vegetarian, we can see this nature very vividly. But who was truly to blame? We do not get the answer, even by the end of the novel, especially with its sudden and ambiguous ending.
She turned vegetarian, and the blame was placed on the dreams she saw every night. It was not even a dream; it was a nightmare. She kept trying to run from it, but nothing helped. But is it really the dream that should be blamed?

In the first chapter, we see her through the eyes of her husband. He saw her as an ideal wife, doing all the chores for him and making his life easier. But as soon as she stepped out of that “good wife” role, it became clear that she was not the woman he truly wanted to marry. In fact, he wanted her sister as his wife, someone who would not only take care of him but also earn for them. But the question remains: would he even be able to accept that? A person raised in a custom where a wife’s parents must apologise to their son-in-law simply because their daughter turned vegetarian, would his pride allow him to sit back and eat whatever his wife chose to serve?

So perhaps the person who saw his wife merely as a source of comfort was the one who should carry the blame for what happened to her. Her husband was not just her partner but a symbol of the patriarchal forces that preserve tradition. No matter what, they would not allow themselves to be the ones blamed for breaking custom. They care little that the customs meant to protect people instead break them, both physically and mentally.

That unnamed brother-in-law was a small light of hope that might have changed the ending of the story. Somehow, he seemed close to being an ideal person, but he abandoned all responsibility for the passion he harboured. I call him a light of hope because the flower he painted on Yang-hye had stopped the nightmare. For a brief moment, it seemed as though she might become normal again, but instead it grew worse. He became a symbol of someone who claimed not to care about the system yet would not hesitate to exercise the power that the system gave him. In fact, he was bolder in doing so. And again, the question arises: who is to blame here?

And then there was her sister, the only person in the novel who was ready to take accountability for what happened. She was the only one who kept blaming herself, and near the end, we see her trying to save her sister. However, it was too late. Her sister was already in the final round of the run, where death, similar to the dog’s, was knocking at the door.