Cursed Bunny Revisited
Bora Chung's fairy tales hide a meditation on generational trauma
Spoiler warning: this post will contain spoilers for the book Cursed Bunny
A few months ago I penned a book review of Bora Chung’s book, Cursed Bunny. I drew parallels between the stories and fairy tales, critiqued the author’s use of grotesque imagery, and confessed confusion over some of the stories’ murky lessons. Although I stand by these initial views, a recent book club discussion over the book has led me to revisit the book and its underlying themes with a fresh lens.
The Unfamiliar Book Club
I’ve been a member of a book club for about three years now. A few friends of mine began meeting virtually nearly every week since the summer of the pandemic. So I was surprised to find this new book club feeling like uncharted territory.
This was probably naive of me, it was after all, a book club in a foreign country. It was also a book club of mostly strangers, besides the host and my girlfriend I didn’t know anyone there, and they didn’t know each other. So there was an element of getting to know each other that has never been present in my book club of close friends.
In addition, my typical book club meets every week and only discusses a few chapters of whatever book we’re reading. This means that our understanding of the book evolves together, and we’re bouncing ideas and reactions off of each other in something much closer to real time. In contrast, the new book club (and I think most ordinary book clubs) met once everyone had finished the book. So everyone read the book and developed their perspectives in isolation, so when we met there were more diverse interpretations and attitudes towards the book.
This culminated to create an interesting dynamic, immediately during the introductions one member said “I didn’t care for this book much, I thought it was rather poorly written and it didn’t do much for me.” How should one interpret this from a total stranger? Why had he shown up to the discussion, if he hadn’t enjoyed the book? Was he going to bring a unique and interesting perspective to the group, or only act as a foil, creating tension? As it turned out, he appeared to be one of the best read members and offered a lot of insight into the themes and literary devices deployed in the book, though I’m not sure we changed his mind about it.
Insightful Discussions
The most fascinating part of the book club was that nobody really knew what to make of the book. Many people had reactions to specific stories, but just as I expressed confusion in my review, everyone seemed to find many of the stories disjointed and opaque. The discussion began focused on people’s reaction to the horror element, words like “creepy” were employed heavily; some loved the book specifically for this tension it created, while others dragged themselves through the book despite it.
After we had exhausted the atmospheric aspect of the book, the discussion focused primarily on specific stories which had resonated for people. This started out pretty predictably, there was much talk about a story where androids reveal their sentience and strike down their human creator. The obvious analogies to advances in artificial intelligence were drawn and the expected nervous laughter was dutifully given. Likewise the “golden goose” story was compared to capitalism, to much serious nodding.
From there though, things began to get interesting. The host read a rather lengthy passage from my favorite story, and asked us to respond to it. This led to some debate over the slightly ambiguous ending. What the debate revealed was that a story which on its surface was about the self-destructive nature of vengeance also carried another theme. After relating the story of how his family’s work in crafting curses for people ended up leading his grandfather to fall under his own curse, our narrator ultimately declares his intention to break this familial cycle by refusing to have children, and thus ending the curse by not passing it on.
Framing this as a story about generational curse made something click. After excavating this theme, we began to draw parallels to other stories from the book. From here things snowballed quickly and we discovered that nearly all of the stories depict some kind of generational or cyclical curse or trauma.
The Generational Curse
The first story in the book is about a mother who rejects her child because she finds it disgusting. By the end of the story, the child has matured and due to her rejection, takes vengeance on her. In the aforementioned android story, the creations reach maturity and turn upon their creator. In the golden goose story, the protagonists greed and abuse of the golden goose causes a curse to destroy his family in grotesque fashion.
In another story, a woman falls in love with a cursed prince, and sets out to lift the curse. Once she succeeds however, she finds the prince’s true nature revealed as bloodthirsty conqueror, who turns on her. In a story I summarized last time, a young man is forced to be a ritual sacrifice, but after surviving, hunts down and kills the monster to which children are sacrificed, and finds that somehow the monster was integral to the town, and with it slain, the town has vanished.
As I pointed out in my review, the last story stands apart from all the others, yet even here the plot focuses on curses, with the protagonist uniquely able to see ghosts who are trapped reliving their past. This ties in nicely with a story in which a woman is trapped in a perverse Groundhog Day universe, whereby she is rescued from a crashed car by a mysterious voice, which ultimately guides her through some kind of time loop until she winds up the victim of the same car crash, listening to the voice rescue the next iteration of herself.
Even with this new perspective, these stories are divergent. In some, the characters bring a curse down on themselves and their families. In others, Chung contrasts a younger generation rising up to crush their elders, with others in which the elders bring destruction upon their descendants. In the car crash story, Chung has one woman playing both parts, the destroyer and the destroyed yet still trapped in a cycle. Sometimes Chung breaks curses rather than casting them, but even here the outcomes differ. In the final story a woman lifts her lovers curse and allows him to finally find peace, yet in an earlier story a woman lifts her lovers curse and instead reveals him to be a monster.
A New Perspective
After this discussion, my view on cursed bunny is transformed entirely. It transformed from series of disjointed and slightly grotesque fairy tales, to a contemplation on generational trauma and cycles of abuse. Although the implications are still somewhat elusive, Chung’s narratives explore the tragic nature of curses and the toll they exact on families.
Lifting the curses does not always provide salvation. Perhaps this is the nature of curses, once entangled in them there is no path out which does not involve destruction. Yet, Chung offers hope. In the stories where a character lifts a curse, there is a price to pay. The prince turns out to be a monster, or the monster was actually keeping the town alive. Yet in these stories the protagonist survives, and is given a chance to move forward, although their reality is dramatically altered. And in the final story, a character finds peace.
I wanted to revisit Cursed Bunny partially to correct the record, because I had missed such a crucial theme in my first review. But I also wanted to come back to this because the experience of the book club was so powerful. I’ve had the experience before of reading a book and understanding it. I’ve also had the experience before of reading a book and not understanding it, and needing someone to share their understanding. This however, was an extraordinary instance of collective understanding emerging from individual confusion.
