No Longer Human Review: A Tragic Masquerade in Motion
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Somebody famously said that “iimitation is the greatest form of flattery,” right? Or at least that’s how the quote goes, and I know I can simply look it up on the internet, but I’ve decided this review is going to be completely human, without the need for looking up things online. And coming to the point – No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai is a great example of writers who surpass those they are imitating, or those they are inspired by.
The novel is narrated by a young man called Oba Yozo, who recalls his struggles to “fit in” with those around him, right from when he was a little boy. He fails to understand social conventions or why people behave the way they do, or most important of all, how he is expected to respond in situations and conversations. Always in a state of feeling alienated and out of body, Yozo resorts to clowning around and fibbing to make people laugh, so that he can fit in, even though he is completely miserable on the inside.
The way No Longer Human starts off made it sound a little like Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and interestingly, not only did Osamu Dazai admire the Russian literary icon, he also mentions him a few times in No Longer Human. Both are narrated by male protagonists who detest the world around them, but in very different ways. I found Osamu’s work to be far superior to Notes from the Underground, because despite the title, Osamu’s protagonist is a lot more human than Dostoevsky’s unnamed narrator in Notes from the Underground, who is a boring, whining, arrogant government employee with severe personality issues.
Oba Yozo too has a severe personality crisis. He lives passively, eating and drinking, barely attending university, and getting into affairs with random women he meets along the way. In Yozo’s own words, he lives like a kept man, but the women he has relationships with aren’t wealthy, so often, Yozo resorts to selling their clothes to buy himself some food or drink. He has very little sense of shame, responsibility, o well, any human-ness that can be defined in a concrete manner. And yet, anybody who has ever gone through a phase of isolation or feelings of alienation will be able to empathize with some parts of Yozo, if not all of him.
One of the more disturbing sections of No Longer Human is when Yozo, who is still very young, barely out of high school, starts seeing an older woman who suggests they end their lives with a double-suicide. Yozo survives the attempt, while his lover tragically perishes, so he is left dealing with the legal aftermath of the incident. It’s his dad’s connections that rescue him from the police and a prolonged trial, with Yozo unwittingly (and the author deliberately) laying emphasis on how his social standing always gets him out of a pinch. It’s perhaps this familial cushion that emboldens him to live his life on the edge, anonymously, without any goals, without any sense of identity or
There are evidently times when, as a modern reader, you’re made to wonder if Yozo might have a mental health disorder, but given that his story is set sometime in the 1930s, it’s not something that was taken seriously. Ultimately, Yozo’s tale ends abruptly, just at a time when the reader maybe begins to slightly understand his state of mind. And honestly, at this point, I’m not feeling too bad about ending my review too abruptly either.
Rating: 4 on 5 stars. ‘No Longer Human’ is also on Kindle Unlimited.
