The Hole Hye-Young Pyun 5 Points

 During my senior year of high school, I got rear-ended while I was at a  stoplight. The lady who hit me screamed and screamed at me, and even when someone came over to tell her to stop,  she just screamed at them. She yelled at me that it was all my fault because I had slammed on my brakes in the middle of the intersection when I actually had stopped behind the line and she just wasn't paying attention. She tried to manipulate me by telling me she was pregnant and if the baby was injured it was all my fault and then she tried to get me to not go to insurance because she had rear-ended someone else four years earlier and her insurance rates were just starting to go down. I was 18 at the time and this was my first accident, and when the cop showed up, I was told that I could've made the light and that I should be grateful I'm not getting a ticket. I was marked at fault. I found out later that the cop who showed up was not a traffic cop, clearly because he obviously didn't understand any rules of the road. When we brought it up to the insurance, they overruled what the cop had said because it is always the fault of the person who rear-ends because they did not leave enough space to react. The lady claimed she was going to sue, but that never happened. What did happen was that months later, after my car had been fixed, the front passenger door had a dent in it. Someone had taken a blunt object and beat it into my door. 

Reading The Hole made me very uncomfortable. The horror in this book does not come from something supernatural but rather it comes from a sense of total lack of control and understanding. The monsters in this book are very real and a lot of people are haunted by them. Paralyzed and unable to speak, metaphorically chained to a bed, at the mercy of petty, self-centered people. As a kid, I was always quiet and reserved, and I was easily taken advantage of, and reading this book, I really understood what Oghi was feeling. It's terrifying to be humiliated and abused, at times in front of others, and no one does a thing. Like Oghi's work friends and therapist, they stand there and observe. The feeling of loneliness and despair he felt as he knew he had to deal with this all alone. The beginning of the story is mostly Oghi remembering his life before the crash as he's being transported around the hospital and idly sitting in his room with nothing else to do. His wife is a figurative vampire and his mother-in-law becomes one in the end.

The whole situation feels like something I would watch on The Twilight Zone, ironic ending and all. For the entire two-thirds of the book, I thought that his wife was impossible to handle. I found her self-centered and self-serving. It's not till the last couple of chapters that I realize Oghi had cheated and made her feel unheard just as much as she antagonized and belittled him. There is a lot of irony in this book surrounding Oghi's life and the last few days. I think that Oghi's wife made him feel like he was constantly in a hole, referring to the quote about digging yourself further into a hole whenever in an argument. Also referring to the literal hole his mother-in-law coaxes him into. She was constantly belittling him and incessantly causing emotional harm. Not to say that Oghi didn't do his fair share of emotional harm but nevertheless, it was his wife that caused the accident in a fit of hysterical rage.

It's disturbing when he's trying to tell his physical therapist that he needs to go to the hospital and he basically takes it personally. Oghi is trying to confide in him that he is being abused by his mother-in-law and the PT takes it as an insult, assuming that he's saying hospital because he prefers the PTs there. Even writing down "M.I.T. problem" didn't come across to the PT. He assumed he was talking about the hole in the yard she was digging. It's disturbing how everyone who comes into the house is somehow oblivious to the fact that Oghi is clearly uncomfortable and being mistreated. I think there is irony in this because he didn't really listen to his wife. There was a lot of tension in their relationship and it stemmed from bad communication between them. The irony is now that he needs the attention, no one is going to listen to him.