No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai.
“I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.”
It is vital for a compelling novel to have some structure of unabating momentum, some energy, to propel the reader through the plot. Yet, the subject of depression is a crippling malady defined predominantly by its inability to evoke a feeling of interest. This trait makes depression one of the most strenuous subject to address in fiction. This is also what makes Osamu Dazai my favorite author of all times.
“No Longer Human”—A depressed semi-autobiography of Osamu Dazai.
This poignant story takes place in twentieth century postwar Japan, unraveling the life of a terrified, detached, self-loathing and self-conscious young man, Oba Yozo, who is caught between the cessation of the traditions of a Japanese aristocratic family and the influence of Western culture. Yozo is a scaredy cat, his every action is tyrannized by his terror of life, guilt of isolation and devastating shame of being alive. In consequence, he regarded himself to be disqualified from being a human.
“There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes.”
“I have tried insofar as possible to avoid getting involved in the sordid complications of human beings. I have been afraid of being sucked down into their bottomless whirlpool.”
At a very young age, Yozo has learned to feign a smile and put on a witty clownish mask to navigate through life and negotiate with his fears of human bond. Deep inside, he never connected. His penetrating insight that life is in essence a meaningless process of gradual, inexorable death lead him to his degradation and downfall into the life of crime, prostitutes, alcohol, morphine and suicides. His feelings that he is a disqualified human being, is driven by his sensitivity to the frailty of human bonds in the urban world. From his perspective, when an outsider is caged in life, any struggling attempts are futile; death seems to be the only escape.
“During the course of my life I have wished innumerable times that I might meet with a violent death, but I have never once desired to kill anybody. I thought that in killing a dreaded adversary I might actually be bringing him happiness.”
“The more I feared people the more I was liked, and the more I was liked the more I feared them—a process which eventually compelled me to run away from everybody.”
“What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.”
As mentioned in the start, an effective piece of writing must embody some form of sustained momentum to keep readers engaged. For this novel, it’s through the viciously mental spiraling of self-hatred and self-annihilation of Yozo that Dazai fuels the story with. This work of escapism may not be instantly gratifying…or gratifying at all. It tasted bitter on its way down and certainly takes literary machoism to ride the ride.
