Your Metamorphosis is an extraordinary short story that challenges the boundaries of the bodily. Through his gripping science fiction, author Kim Ewhan places us teetering on the edge of medical speculation, pushing us to consider the corporeal consequences of human identity.
When presented with the opportunity to surgically achieve the perfect body, how far can one go before they are no longer human?
Following our narrator and his partner, Your Metamorphosis is set in a world where cosmetic surgery has progressed past simple aesthetic adjustments. News reports are interjected within the couple’s story that portray the staggering medical advancements—procedures that not only allow patients to augment their height or sculpt their jawbone, but also allow them to affix their shoulders with a second pair of arms or conjoin their torso with a loved one. Our narrator’s partner is enchanted by the promise of his dream body: bigger hands, longer legs, and broader shoulders. His laundry list of desired body modifications becomes increasingly worrisome to the narrator, “If you got all of that done what would be left of you?”
One evening, the couple is watching a documentary about a British man wishing to amputate his legs. His reason for abandoning his perfectly functional legs is not for aesthetics or a sexual fetish, but because he simply does not perceive his legs as being a part of his body. Our narrator’s partner explains that the concept is similar to being transgender:
“That’s right, transgender people feel that their true selves and the gender of their bodies are in disagreement. And so they remove their genitals in order to become the gender they want to be. It’s not that they are perverts who get turned on by having their genitals removed, is it? It’s the same with that guy. It’s just that for him his body, as he feels it should be, is a body without legs.”
Soon, laws are put into place to protect people looking to change their physical bodies into the bodies they believe they should have. As technology advances and public opinion adjusts, people begin transplanting their bodies into zoo animals and household appliances:
“The CEO of R Refrigerator Company announces, “I wanted to show consumers that our products are the best. So I’ve had my brain transplanted behind the fridge compartment.”
As the possibilities of body modification reach newer heights, our narrator reluctantly accompanies his partner to the medical research center where his partner becomes more and more captivated by his own metamorphosis. His partner’s endless chase after the perfect body begins to take its toll on the couple, as eventually, his partner becomes unrecognizable from the man he loved.
As told through the perspective of the narrator, the story reads as a narrative of striking loss—the loss of his partner as well as the slippage of his understanding of the human body and identity. “I’m trying to understand you but the more I try the further off you seem to escape to,” he says to his partner.
When reading this short story, it is almost unclear if Kim Ewhan is in support or opposition of transgender identity and gender-affirming surgery. Something about getting one’s brain transplanted into a dolphin or refrigerator feels as if Kim is making a mockery of transgender identity. However, I actually think Kim masterfully negotiates what it means to be human as he presents a broad spectrum on which to locate our own position on gender identity and the human body. By deconstructing the narrator’s understanding of the body, Kim is effectively challenging “human” as a biopolitical tool to discredit transphobic rhetoric. Though an extreme example, the refrigerator points to how a company co-opts the public’s growing support for pro-transgender legislation for capitalist gain—sound familiar?
Your Metamorphosis is the kind of short story that sticks to a person days after they’ve read it. I’ve personally talked about little else in the past three weeks. By nature, short stories have to accomplish more in a fewer word count. Nonetheless, Kim Ewhan delivers an undeniably salient story that holds space with Harrison Bergeron and The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas in its arresting social commentary. With all of the anti-trans legislation spreading through the US, Your Metamorphosis is an electrifying literary force in today’s political landscape.
(Your Metamorphosis was translated by Sophie Bowman and published in Koreana vol. 28, Winter 2014)
Only Naengmyeon 
Leave a comment