My final takeaway from reading and studying this novel would be the power of perspectives in conveying a particular story, especially if the story has two distinct sides (good or bad most likely). In this novel, Kang made use of polyperspectivity to not only deepen our insight onto this uprising but also add an element of time and multiple individuals to highlight the lasting impact of the uprising. I find it exceptionally fascinating how both the Handmaid’s tale and the Human Acts make use of perspectives, one solely focusing on a single perspective to represent all handmaids and the other focusing on the variety of perspectives to establish a sense of collective memory that holds greater value than an individual memory, to deliver the main message. Both uses have ups and downs, but I don’t think I can certainly say which one’s better and which one isn’t because for instance, providing multiple perspectives help convey greater insight, yet there may be some confusion in terms of the characters.

As a Korean, although I have heard, read, and watched multiple records regarding this event through multiple forms of media (movies, news, documentaries, school textbooks, etc.), but I never fully grasped how much of a lasting impact it had on the Korean culture/society mainly because I spent most of my teenage life outside of Korea. I have always acknowledged the violence and cruelty of this uprising, but through Kang’s descriptive and grotesque imagery of the event reminded me of the sacrifices of my ancestors that allowed me to be where I am. Moreover, I have always thought using multiple perspectives only makes the story more shallow in the sense that we are unable to fully comprehend all character’s conflicted nature, but through this novel I realized how use of literary devices like abject for example can compensate for this potential drawback.

I feel like one of the main values of reading historical novels is the opportunity provided by the author for the readers to indirectly experience the life back then, especially because readers can draw parallels between the history and the modern society. Furthermore, through such novels can we now fully understand the culture of a particular country because being knowledgable of the country’s history, as well as being part of the collective memory I believe creates a sense of unity and community, which is a key element of what forms a culture. From such novels, we can also identify the differences in the use of language, as well as key characteristics of each culture (e.g. relationship between soul and body) which all contributes to our better understanding of a country’s culture, potentially contributing towards the establishment of respect amongst people from different culture.