Reviews

Indigno de ser humano by Osamu Dazai

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teryaki_181's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The whole time while reading this I felt a sense of dread building up—but even so, this book was beautifully tragic and well-written. The main character is very troubled, but that just makes the whole purpose of the book even better.
Also, it only took me 2.5 hours to read. I really like this book.

alinaedwards's review against another edition

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"Am I what they call an egoist? Or am I the opposite, a man of excessively weak spirit? I really don’t know myself, but since I seem in either case to be a mass of vices, I drop steadily, inevitably, into unhappiness, and I have no specific plan to stave off my descent."

I tried writing a review of this novel a few minutes after I finished it, but found I needed to process what I’d read for a bit longer before putting any words to the vague impressions swirling around in my mind. Now that it’s been several hours, I think I can get down at least a few of those ideas.

Often, the most interesting stories are the ones that don’t let you off the hook so easily. No Longer Human definitely follows that pattern. The novel is narrated by Yozo, a man who, to the outside world, appears perfectly normal, if you ignore his worsening drinking habit. But Yozo’s inner life is tortured and pitiful, as he is so afraid of other people so as to hide himself behind the mask of a “clown.” His scheme, which lasts from childhood well into adulthood, involves drawing attention away from himself by getting “the human beings” to laugh at him, passing him off as a buffoon, to distract them from his secret—that he isn’t one of them. There are moments, however, when someone catches a glimpse of the truth behind the farce, and this is when Yozo is plunged into mortal terror. His internal strife makes for a fascinating, deeply disheartening, and at times disorienting psychological novel, one that intrigued me throughout, even as I cringed a little at the events of the narrative.

In my original scrapped review, I mentioned some parallels between Dazai’s novel and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. (Funnily enough, Dostoevsky is mentioned in No Longer Human, though it’s Crime and Punishment that’s referenced, not Notes.) Both of these short novels embody the voices of neurotic outcasts, cursed to remain cut off from other human beings. The particulars of their predicaments differ slightly, however; from what I remember, the Underground Man is contemptuous of society at large, whereas Yozo is simply afraid of other human beings. No Longer Human of course stands very well alone, but I think it could be enlightening to compare these two works further and see what they could bring out in one another. On the whole, I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” this novel—it’s hard to enjoy it, knowing that it was semi-autobiographical and Dazai died of suicide—but its slow intensity is almost hypnotic, and the way Dazai charts a life of quiet self-destruction is remarkably well done.