The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

Sun-Mi Hwang’s The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly (2000) is a novella that tells the tale of Sprout the chicken’s journey to freedom and motherhood. It was widely lauded as an instant classic and appeared on various bestseller lists, including the Los Angeles Times, New Atlantic Indie, Mountains and Plains Indie, and Southern California Indie bestseller lists. In addition, the book was adapted into an animated film (which became the highest-grossing animated film in Korean history), a comic book, a play, and a musical. It has been translated from its original Korean into over a dozen languages.

The guide uses the 2014 Oneworld Publications edition of the book.

Plot Summary

Sprout, an egg-laying chicken who lives in a coop on a farm, longs to be free and to be a mother. She suffers in the coop, resenting her imprisonment and mourning the fact that her eggs are always taken from her when she longs to sit on one and help it hatch into a chick.

Depressed and despondent, Sprout stops eating, which (along with her advancing age) leads her to lay an egg that is chalky and blood-flecked, with an improperly formed shell. The farmer throws it to the dog, who eats it, and this indignity leaves Sprout heartbroken. She vows never to lay another egg.

The farmer decides that Sprout is sick and old. She’s taken from the coop and thrown into a hole in the ground with other chickens the farmer considers dying or dead. She awakens during the night to a yelled warning that she must escape. She does so, narrowly missing the weasel, who planned to grab and eat her. The voice that warned her belongs to Straggler, a once-wild duck who lives as an outsider among the barn animals. Straggler convinces the animals to let Sprout stay for the night.

Sprout is ejected the next day. She goes into the fields, reveling in her freedom. At night, she digs holes or hides among reeds to escape the weasel, who hunts for fresh meat during hours of darkness.

Although happy to be free, Sprout reflects that she still desperately longs to be a mother. She hears a scream in the night and then stumbles on an abandoned egg, still warm. Sprout sits on it, feeling that her dreams have come true. Straggler, who seems downcast, brings her fish and dances throughout the night, which confuses Sprout. Sprout asks Straggler the whereabouts of the white duck she saw with Straggler; Straggler is snappy and reluctant to answer.

The night before the egg hatches, while Straggler is lying silently, the weasel takes Straggler. Later, Sprout realizes that the duck sacrificed himself to ensure that the weasel’s belly was full when the egg hatched.

Sprout and the newly hatched baby, who Sprout calls Baby and assumes is a chick, go to the barn, seeking refuge. The ducks, who point out that Baby is a duckling, want Baby to stay, but the hen thinks Sprout and Baby will be a corrupting influence on her chicks. Sprout realizes that the duckling is Straggler and the white duck’s offspring.

Sprout overhears the farmers saying they’ll clip Baby’s wings and boil Sprout for dinner, so she sneaks away with Baby. They live by the reservoir, moving nests often to avoid the weasel. The constant movement leads to Sprout’s becoming sick and thin, but Baby grows strong. He becomes a confident swimmer.

The leader of the ducks approaches Sprout and Baby, saying that Baby should join the brace of ducks. Sprout angrily rejects the proposition but notices Baby looking longingly after them; she feels increasingly distant from Baby, who is getting older and seems brooding and unhappy. She names Baby Greentop but continues to call him Baby.

One day, the vicious weasel confronts Sprout and Baby, and Baby, in a panic, realizes that he can fly and takes off. After realizing that the weasel is female, not male (as she’d assumed) and is a fellow mother, Sprout threatens the weasel’s babies. The weasel makes a pact with Sprout not to kill Baby unless no other options are available. Sprout reflects that the weasel, like her, is a desperate mother trying to keep herself and her babies alive.

A flock of wild mallard ducks, the flock that Straggler once belonged to, arrives at the reservoir. Baby is overwhelmed by the awesome sight. He tries to join the ducks, but they’re cold and exclusionary. Sprout watches, heartbroken. When the weasel kills the flock’s guard, the flock accepts Baby, who has keen senses and has been evading the weasel his whole life. Baby feels conflicted over whom he should live with; the ducks will move on soon. Sprout encourages him to join the ducks and fly to distant lands, even though it will break her heart. He does so, soaring off with them one day.

Sprout feels devastated and empty; she wishes she could fly so that she could join Baby. She realizes that the weasel has crept up on her as she watches Baby fly away. No longer feeling the desire to keep evading the weasel, Sprout tells the weasel to kill her to feed her babies. Everything goes black and red, and then Sprout feels as if she’s flying away over the reservoir like a feather.