Happy December 1st everyone! We have finally entered winter and got one step closer to the festive season, which I am really excited for. Over here we already had a few snowy days, though at the moment the temperature constantly keeps around zero degrees, teasing us with the prospect of snowfall.
The last few weeks I have spent rediscovering my long lost hobby of literature, and got into the habit of writing short reviews and analyses of the stuff I’ve read. I have published these thoughts on my Anilist account, though figured, why not post them here on my personal blog as well? It would only make sense to have them over here too. So henceforth, I will post my previous and my new reading updates both on Anilist and my blog!
Anyway, I have continued my exploration of classics and finished another famous Japanese novel – No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai.
No Longer Human recalls the semi-biographic story of Ooba Youzou, told in first-person through three notebooks he has supposedly left behind. Beginning somewhere in 1930s Japan, we follow Youzou’s life journey from his birth into a well-off family, to his tragic end into alcoholism, addiction, mental decline and eventual life of complete isolation.
Even as a young kid, Ooba felt fundamentally different from humans, a total alien who could not understand others and in turn did not understand himself. This is shown through such events as when his father asked what presents he would like to get, he would ask for things he thought a normal kid would ask, and a father would be pleased to gift, instead of things he actually wanted. Ooba understood that he is “weird” and because of that started fearing humans. Ooba tried his best to imitate others in order to form connections, which is also how he learned that if he acted like a clown and a buffoon, always making others laugh by doing stupid things, people would drop their guard around him and be less likely to get angry at him. However, this act was completely destroyed when a classmate figured out this facade and exposed Youzou’s acting, making him distrust people even more, and marking a significant turning point in his life that would influence his depressive adult life.
This and similar events in Ooba’s later life, which when he grew up turned from mere clowning to excessive drinking and debauchery, all have the central theme of alienation and the constant feeling of being fundamentally different from other humans. We see how these feelings of isolation and fear warp into a sick combination of severe depression, a complete lack of understanding oneself, but also distrust and apathy towards others. Not only Youzou never really knew what he wanted himself, but every time he attempted to connect with someone else, either to form friendships with other guys or relationships with women, he ended up even more disappointed than before, driving him further into isolation.
As someone who also went through heavy periods of depression and other mental health hurdles, I found it easy to relate to many instances of this otherness that Ooba describes. The thoughts that nobody else is going through these issues, that you are the only one who sees life differently, and that “society” is a beast separate from you built on mutual deceit and distrust of each other, that you either have to learn to adapt and play the game, or completely drop out of society and try to somehow survive without relying on others, are heavy decisions to reconcile with. The stigma against mental illness, while stronger in the times of the novel, are sadly still happening in our current day. When push comes to shove, people don’t really know how or want to help someone who seems to lack “basic” human understanding of interpersonal relationships or self identity, and judge quite harshly those who engage in immoral actions and thought. After all, it is easier to just put people like Youzou in a mental institution and separate them from “normal” society, not giving into concern about the well being of someone who is conventionally a “madman”, which is the unfortunate fate that became of our tragic protagonist, who, by the end, describes himself as “neither happy nor unhappy,” existing in a state of detachment that he perceives as being “no longer human.” Whether this signifies complete despair, a fragile acceptance, or something in between though is left deliberately ambiguous, further showcasing the complexity of Youzou’s feelings of alienation and relationship with society at large.
And you know what the most tragic part for me was? It wasn’t his difficult upbringing, his childhood of buffoonery and the following expose, nor his meaningless adult life which was a result of his teen years acting a clown instead of building his identity, or his end of being institutionalised and later released to spend the rest of his life in an isolated home. It was the epilogue which shows how the people who knew him, said that he was a kind and generous man, who just developed a drinking problem, and otherwise would have been an upstanding citizen if just not for that. Such a simple paragraph showcases such a complex relationship between a person’s own mind, how he views society, and conversely how society sees him. Youzou in a way was just living in a hell of his own making, trapped in the constant anxiety of his mind and his paranoia and overthinking about other people. While heavy societal expectations are a contributing factor to Youzou’s internal struggles, like the ones placed on him since childhood by his own father, it is not the case that everyone put these same expectations on him, and instead saw him as just a fellow human. On one hand, society completely misunderstood Youzou, and did not see his struggles, but on the other, there were also people who were not as judging of him as harshly as he was judging himself.
I can recommend this book for people who have struggled with such feelings of alienation and confusion of understanding oneself and others, and also people who are not afraid of taking the front seat of someone who drives on the tail end of depression and extreme lack of self identity. It is a tough read, but it also masterfully examines complicated themes of alienation and belonging.