Diverging From The ‘Hive-Mind’: A Critical Analysis of ‘The Hive and The Honey'

“The Hive and the Honey,” a short story from Paul Yoon’s 2023 collection of the same name, is an epistolary narrative told from the perspective of Andrei Bulavin, a young Russian soldier stationed at a Korean settlement in the south of Russia. The story is told through Bulavin’s letter to his uncle, where he recounts his experiences with the settlers and his blossoming friendship with a young girl who is hard of hearing. On one particular night, the girl’s mother kills her father, fed up with his continuous rape. This angers the other settlers, including the girl’s uncle, who subsequently kills the mother. The villagers then begin to see the mother’s ghost each night, disrupting their routines. Bulavin and the girl—neither of whom are visited by the ghost—continue to bond, and the villagers begin to assume he is taking advantage of her. One morning, several settlers confront Bulavin about this assumption, threatening to chase him out. Rather than growing alarmed, he finds the girl and teaches her how to attract a bee with a cup of honey. The two of them head into the woods together, and the story comes to a close. Throughout this narrative, Yoon uses the contrast and conflict between differing identities to capture how outliers are seen as a liability to homogeneous groups.

Yoon establishes the Korean settlement as a homogenous community early on in his story, when Bulavin recounts the death of the father. A crowd of settlers gather around the scene, responding with “a collective gasp” (92) rather than individual reactions. When the mother declares that she has killed her husband to stop his nightly rape, the villagers unanimously classify as her as the villain in the situation. They watch, unbothered, as the uncle brutally murders her, and several settlers even restrain Bulavin when he tries to defend her. In the morning, the daughter buries her mother’s corpse, and Bulavin notes how “no one helped” (95). The settlement’s collective reaction to the parents’ deaths, and the aftermath, establishes them as a hive minded group. This unanimity continues in their reaction to the mother’s ghost. Bulavin calls the haunting a “collective delirium” (98), since nearly every member of the settlement falls victim to it. The settlers address the issue of the ghost by forming “a council of some kind,” exemplifying how they gravitate towards group solutions. Additionally, Bulavin mentions how “most [of the settlers] had come from a province just across the border that had been suffering from drought” (96). This shared background further emphasizes the homogeneity of the community. Bulavin also repeatedly refers to the villagers as, singularly, “the settlement.”

The most explicit divergence from the settlement’s homogeneity is the mother’s ghost, who serves as the only active non-living character. In contrast, the other settlers are heavily focused on their lives, with the uncle explicitly telling Bulavin, “We are trying to live in a land no one wants or thinks about” (100) and Bulavin concluding that the settlers would have remained impartial to him if he weren’t “a hindrance to their daily lives” (96). The difference between the settlers’ existences as living humans and the mother’s state of ghostly immortality is further emphasized by the emotions expressed by the two parties. When the villagers encounter the mother’s ghost, they react with fear, consistently screaming for help. The ghost, on the other hand, is described as “full of vengeance” (98) during these visits. The anger of the mother’s ghost, juxtaposed with the villagers’ fear for their lives, highlighting her deviation from the settlement’s dominant identity as a group of living humans. The settlers consistently adhere to practical, systematic approaches, which proves effective in the face of natural issues, such as bugs and unpleasant weather (92). However, their strategic solutions fail to protect them from the mother’s ghost, who strays from the natural realm, and who continues to haunt the community (99). This emphasizes how a homogeneous community, such as the settlement, can be particularly vulnerable to an outlier, such as the mother’s ghost.

Bulavin is another example of an outlier in the Korean settlement, due to his status as a Russian soldier. The cultural difference between Bulavin and the settlers is underscored by their language barrier, with Bulavin referencing the settlers’ “broken Russian” (93), as well as his own consistent need for translations. Yoon’s decision to make Bulavin a first-person narrator further distinguishes him from the villagers, applying first-person personal pronouns to his own character and third-person personal pronouns to the settlers. Additionally, Bulavin and the settlers have conflicting interests: Bulavin has been sent to enforce Russian law, while the villagers prefer to be self-sufficient (94). Bulavin is also the only person to defend the mother on the night of her death, explicitly countering the settlement’s primary stance. And, when the mother’s ghost begins to haunt the settlement, he is one of the only inhabitants she does not visit. At one point, in reference to the hauntings, the uncle tells Bulavin, “everything was fine until you came here” (100). This emphasizes how the settlement views Bulavin as a deviation from the larger group, and therefore the variable rendering them vulnerable to the ghostly visits. The settlers make a similar comment when they accuse Bulavin of having a sexual relationship with the girl, referring to him as “the cause of all of this” (102). Bulavin later states, in reference to this encounter, “If I refuse to leave, they will come for me, all of them as a group” (102). This solidifies the idea that Bulavin’s divergence from the community makes him appear as a liability and a source of destruction.

The third outlier in the settlement is the young girl, due to both her age and disability. Bulavin notes that the girl is the only child in the village, a uniqueness further highlighted by the fact that the majority of the inhabitants are “in the latter half of their lives” (96). Additionally, the girl is described as “thin and short for her age” (95), which adds to her youthful appearance. The fact that she is unable to hear only further distinguishes her from the rest of the settlers; this is highlighted on the night of her parents’ deaths, when the rest of the village is woken by the noise while she continues to sleep (98). The concept of being asleep is used as a further contrast between her and the others when her mother’s ghost haunts the village. The settlers begin to lose sleep over the hauntings, while the girl, who is never visited by the ghost and cannot hear her neighbors’ screams, continues to sleep undisturbed (99). Bulavin begins to theorize that the girl is the one behind the hauntings, given her estrangement from the rest of the community. He considers it a reasonable possibility that “she has figured out a way to alter her appearance so that the settlement believes she is her mother” (101). At the end of the story, as the girl walks through the woods with Bulavin’s teacup, the sunlight distorts her figure so that she bears a closer resemblance to her mother (103). While Bulavin ultimately decides that the girl is not responsible for the hauntings, the visual distortion serves as a nod to the theory, reminding readers of his initial instinct to view her as the source of the settlement’s troubles. The stark contrast between the girl and the other settlers, along with Bulavin’s resulting theory that she has been impersonating her mother’s ghost, emphasizes the recurring idea that deviants can destabilize homogeneous societies.

Yoon continues to emphasize the impact of deviations with the metaphor of a honey bee. At the end of the story, just after being confronted by the village, Bulavin shows the young girl how to attract a bee with a cup of honey. The trick attracts one single bee, rather than a whole hive, mirroring the divergence of characters like the ghost, the girl, and Bulavin from the larger community of settlers. The metaphor is further strengthened by the fact that beehives are homogeneously structured, much like the settlement. The diverging bee continuously flies back and forth between the teacup and its hive, which Bulavin refers to as its “hidden kingdom" (104). Bulavin remarks that, by using this honey trick, he and the girl are “creating a trail” (103) to the hive, counteracting its concealment. This frames the individual bee as a liability to the hive, paralleling how the divergent characters are seen as a threat to the settlement, and how outliers are more generally viewed as destabilizing forces in homogeneous groups. 

Throughout “The Hive and the Honey,” Paul Yoon juxtaposes different identities to underscore how deviations from a homogenous society can appear to threaten that society’s stability. He contrasts the living settlers with the undead mother, emphasizing how her irregular existence hinders the settlement. Bulavin, the only member of the Russian military, and the girl, the only child and deaf individual, are both suspected to be the cause of the hauntings, further developing the idea that outliers are seen as liabilities. Finally, Yoon uses the metaphor of an individual bee straying from its hive, and thereby revealing the hive’s whereabouts, to mirror the perceived threat of the deviating characters to the settlement. Yoon’s emphasis on these various distinctions highlights how deviants can appear destructive to a larger, unified group. 

Work Cited

Yoon, Paul. “The Hive and the Honey.” The Hive and the Honey, S&S/Marysue Rucci Books, 2023.