BRED FROM THE EYES OF A WOLF BY KIM KYUNG JU, TRANSLATED BY JAKE LEVINE
What if wolves behaved like humans? What if humans behaved like wolves? In Kim Kyung Ju’s dystopian play, Bred from the Eyes of a Wolf, translated by Jake Levine, this hypothetical comes alive. The outcome is not for the prudish or light-hearted. Kim newly approaches well-known narratives—from the archetype of the middle class family in Korean culture to the classic Greek Myth of Oedipus—to present an uncannily familiar and unfamiliar nuclear family, shitting together in a world where language is forbidden. The contradictory representation that unfolds forces the audience to confront taboo subjects and make new judgements. What’s morally allowable in a world of humanish wolves? What’s ethically grotesque and what’s just gross?
Kim layers more than classic archetypes here. He builds his post-apocalyptic pastiche with meta-awareness and the cockroach-like systems of civilization: capitalism and castigation. His wolf family highlights their cognizance of their own humanity when the mother warns her son: “Be careful! / Any animal that takes the path of humanity / always results in a scene filled with blood!” to which her son bemoans: “Fuck! Just like a human that thinks he is an animal, / I never recognize the trap.” And then, there’s no short-supply of self-referential jabs at the deadbeat poet, or the censure of writing by an authoritarian government. Near the end, two policemen, in cyber suits and Orwellian practices, arrive to make arrests. From Policeman 2, “This mother and son, / they are like languages that live / in one another’s background. / [ . . . ] It’s suspicious.” Policeman 1, now suspicious, “Language is forbidden! // You are all sentenced to space dust!” Translator Jake Levine howls the play into English and leaves readers a closing essay to ensure that nothing from this new and untried Korean fable is missed.
—Review by Madeline Vardell
