Kim Ae-ran’s novel My Brilliant Life explores the meaning and importance of communication through the interactions of a 17-year-old boy with bipolar disorder, Ae-rae, his parents, and his friend Seo-ha. This novel will make you think about true understanding and empathy with others.
About Ae-ri
In the Korean novel My Brilliant Life, the main character, Ae-ri, and her parents start a family that is a little different. They became parents to a child when they were still in high school, a little earlier than most people do. Many people would call it an accident and a wrong choice, but for the young lovers, it was a special beginning, nothing more, nothing less. Beauty was brought into this world by her parents’ mature and courageous decision. Perhaps wanting to follow in the footsteps of her father and mother, she grew old at an accelerated rate. The medical name is ‘zorosis’. It’s a terrifying disease that causes people to age four to five times faster than normal. However, she has the same amount of time to learn and experience, so her mind and heart are no different from her peers. Because of her illness, she never went to school, but she loved to read books, so she was able to think more maturely than other children her age. Her only means of communication with the world was through media such as newspapers, broadcasts, and the Internet, and her world consisted of the world outside her window, her family, and her neighbor, Mr. Jang, who became her friend.
The Korean novel My Brilliant Life narrates all the events in the affectionate but unassuming voice of 17-year-old Ae-ri. So you can experience every single one of her feelings about the things she goes through. We also get to know this adolescent boy’s personality through his ability to guess and understand people’s thoughts. What’s amazing about listening to her story is that the process of guessing and understanding other people’s thoughts becomes second nature to her. We tend to think of people who have lived a different life from our own as vaguely special. However, Ba-rae simply dismantles this vague notion of specialness. It’s not for no reason that we can relate to her story. It’s because we are all human beings who struggle to understand others.
Communication with her parents
Ah-mi’s parents don’t explain to her the difficulties and sadness they are experiencing because of her. But she knows what makes them sad and worried. When you are in a relationship with the people closest to you, there are things that you know without saying much: you see, feel, and hear what the other person is saying to the other person, creating a new channel for communication. However, even if a channel of communication is created, it is impossible for even her parents to communicate with her every moment of her life. When her mother sees her concentrating on the game to hide her troubles, she is fooled by her act, not knowing what is going on in her heart. Even with the people who are closest to us, if we are not willing to be honest with each other, there will be more unknowns than knowns. In the case of people who spend a lot of time together, such as family members, there will be a lot of information about them that we can only learn through observation, not through conversation. However, if you think about it for a moment, you realize that what you see is a highly subjective judgment. Whether it’s the right judgment or not.
Communication with friends (other than family)
As the days go by, Beauty’s body ages. Her body is small and weak, her immunity is low, and her organs are getting old and diseased, and geriatric diseases are coming to 17-year-old Ae-ri. At the same time, her parents, who spend a lot of time and money to take care of her, have their limits. So the family decides to take a risk by applying to a program called “Helping Neighbors,” where a friend of theirs is a producer. Appearing on the program is her first encounter with the world. Not only does she get to know the world, but the world gets to know her. Being terminally ill and poor doesn’t mean that it’s not prideful and embarrassing to show your vulnerability to others. However, she puts aside her immature thoughts at her age and continues the interview with a wit that no one has ever taught her. Her 17 years of life are in her answers to each question.
Through this one-sided communication with a stranger who reveals himself to her, she meets a friend who makes her heart flutter. Lee Seo-ha is a girl her own age, and she has a friend who is battling cancer. She wraps her hair in a bun to make herself look as natural as possible, writing and deleting emails to Seo-ha over and over again. Seo-ha’s replies keep her awake at night and make her feel strangely uncomfortable. It’s a very familiar picture of us, and perhaps it’s through Seo-ha that Ah-ri first tasted the joy of communicating with a human being on an equal footing, rather than one-sided attention and love.
Knowing that this is a novel, people expect love to come to her and a miraculous, literally “exciting life” to unfold. However, this novel is disturbingly realistic. A child named Lee Seo-ha does not exist in the world, and an uncle in his thirties who is an aspiring screenwriter watched a broadcast of Ae-ri and wrote an email to interview her. Was Lee Seo-ha, a 17-year-old girl suffering from cancer, or an aspiring screenwriter in his 30s, the one that Ae-ah communicated with? One thing is certain, however, and that is that we cannot erase the uncomfortable feeling of the outcome of the communication between Ae-rae and Seo-ha.
In order to communicate with someone who is not your family, you have to take the initiative to give them a lot of information about yourself. There’s almost no way to tell if the information is false, like the one that Bae received, or if it’s the truth. This is why it is difficult to communicate with others. We have limited time together, so we can’t see into their minds through their actions. That’s why, even when Ae-ri realized that Seo-ha’s identity was a man in his 30s, she chose to think and understand on her own. The wannabe writer who claimed to be Seo-ha secretly visited her hospital room because he wanted to be forgiven by her. By trying to understand and secretly visiting the hospital room, both of them did what they could to communicate with others. In the end, they were trying to solve the problems in their relationship by convincing themselves that they could solve the uncomfortable situation.
The meaning of communication from an individual perspective
To some people, Beauty’s life may seem like a pitiful life where she was born with the misfortune of the world, fought against that misfortune, and died. To her family, her life is the full life of their adorable 17-year-old son and grandson, with whom they have laughed and cried, with heartbreak and sadness. For the child, if this child actually exists, her life would be a life of identification with a shy peer who has gone through similar things and whom she feels she can understand. In addition, many people who have seen the events that have happened to her and believe they have communicated with her will have their own stories about her life based on the information she has given them.
So, what was her life like for her? In the novel, no one has ever fully communicated with her. They may have communicated with her partially, but not completely. For her, her life was natural, and there were a lot of emotions that tugged at her heartstrings, and it’s impossible to share them with someone every time. Even if we feel that we have communicated with each other for a moment, we will never be able to know exactly what it is because it is a very personal feeling that is hard to explain or even understand. However, just as we have come to know through beauty, we can feel the feeling of communication because we are human beings who want to understand each other no matter how special and strange life seems. The image of Beauty dying as an old man after living for 17 years makes us think that all the communication she had with others and the world was a preparation for her death. Maybe the communication with others that humans have throughout their lives is a process to communicate with themselves.
