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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A lot of whining. Like A LOT.
And misogyny. But I ignore that in the light of the book being from 1948.
Still I can't figure out if I liked or disliked it.
Just as Yozo said. Neither happiness nor unhappiness with this book.
Which I guess in a way, was the point of it all.
And misogyny. But I ignore that in the light of the book being from 1948.
Still I can't figure out if I liked or disliked it.
Just as Yozo said. Neither happiness nor unhappiness with this book.
Which I guess in a way, was the point of it all.
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book may be quite relatable to neurodivergent people who struggle with empathy and fitting into social norms , the character seems to portray these struggles whilst battling with the idea that they make him alien / a bad person , leading into a sort of self fulfilling prophecy . There’s always an intention from him to try change or alter his life to fit more or be a better person , it is raw in it’s portrayal of the struggle to be human in the way others are
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Alcohol
What does it mean to be human, truly human?
That’s mainly what I took from this book. In all honesty, the title is quite misleading. The title makes the reader assume that this strange and complex concept of humanity is somehow lost. To be lost means that humanity had to have been obtained in the first place. The main character, Yozo, never seemed to have acquired this ‘Humanity’ throughout any part of the book.
Seeing Yozo’s life through his retelling allowed me to understand how he sees the world. I could see it through his perspective: his upbringing, his school days, even his university days. But alas, he never achieved humanity. He loathed it. The idea of being human was a fear of his. One that he craved yet despised. He believed that humans had a natural propensity to be insincere and only did favours in anticipation of being owed one later. That fear of humans made it so difficult for him to form genuine and meaningful relationships with any of the other characters presented throughout the novel. Instead, later in life, he had developed a sense of familiarity with prostitutes. He didn’t see them as human (I don’t think he meant in a way to offend the working women). The prostitutes were honest; they didn’t throw false pretences, and they usually expected nothing much from him as long as they received their due pay. For this reason, he saw them as inhuman. Deviants from society who didn’t fit into its natural order. He saw them as idiotic and daft, as if he had some higher intelligence (which he may have had, since he seemed to always be at the top of his classes, even though he wouldn’t dedicate even a tick of time to studying). But he never seemed to be able to utilise that intelligence to realise that if he had been honest from the start, even if some may have rejected him, there were people who would have accepted him as he was.
During his university days, we truly see the nature of Yozo’s inhumanity. He meets different people from different classes. He realises he wants to be a painter, but he backs out instead of telling his father this. He then meets a group of Marxists, and yet again, instead of telling them his true thoughts, he follows them aimlessly. He meets woman after woman, and instead of rejecting their unwanted advances like any normal individual, he tolerates them for whatever reason. In all honesty, I don’t understand Yozo. I didn’t while reading the book, and I definitely don’t now. Even the 'friend’ he makes during his university days is just a consequence of Yozo being unable to speak his mind (although, to Yozo, this friendship did have its benefits; Yozo no longer had to play 'the clown’ and was later introduced to tobacco, alcohol, and prostitutes). Then he gets kicked out of university for his poor attendance at classes he didn’t want to attend in the first place.
Honestly, Yozo was a downer. He saw nothing but negativities. And in the moments that he found someone who could bring the notion of his humanity to fruition (through the ideologies of love), it was stripped from him. Well, instead, he ruined it. He had found his match, someone who saw life just as badly as he did. And that never boded well. Their negativity just topped one another, leading them to both seek an escape from the torments of life. Ultimately, Yozo was forced to live life alone, again, inhuman.
At some point, much later in the book, he gets married for the second time (his first marriage was inconsequential as he spent most of it in a drunken stupor). This second marriage had its bright sides, to say the least. He truly loved his wife (or so I believe) for her naivety and overly trusting nature. She never expected to be double-crossed or to double-cross anyone. She was honest to a fault. The complete opposite of him. She trusted Yozo in everything he did and said. And for that, he loved her, not in a natural sense, but in a sense at least. And as they say, all good things must come to an end.
The aspect he loved most in his wife was the reason they broke apart. She was taken advantage of by a man of no fundamental importance to the story, but the aftereffects of the assault led to Yozo despising his wife. Although he knew it was not his wife’s fault, he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that his precious virgin lady (he did have a strange obsession with the fact that she was a maiden when they married. I have no clue what that was about) had been defiled by another man. Leading him to seek out alcohol yet again. Which, in turn, ruined their marriage. His wife became reclusive and barely spoke even to him. Her shy and soft personality had taken on a depressing and saddening state. And Yozo couldn’t stand it. After this, he had sought out a pharmacy for drugs to help him with his ailments, but the lady working there had offered him some opioids instead, which he later became reliant on instead of the spirits. This led him into further decline. But he believed the drugs made him human in a way. He was active and outgoing. He didn’t fear communication and wasn’t scared of rebuttal. He was alive.
Then he hit his limit. I can’t remember specifically what happened at this point since I finished the book some days ago. Still, he ended up in the hospital (which ended up being a madhouse) as a result of his sponsor’s (Flatfish) efforts and a friend of his (who wasn’t even really a friend in any sense of the word). Months later, his family gave him an ultimatum and sent him to live in a rural village where there were no women, except an older lady who worked there as a servant. He lives there for the next three years.
At this point, my brain was fried. I don’t know if it was due to a lack of understanding on my part, or the translation, or whether the book intentionally makes the reader want to poke their brains out.
In the end, we never know what happens to Yozo after this. We don’t know if he is alive, dead, or human.
Reminder: He’s 27 at this point in the book.
The madam who worked at the bar that Yozo used to frequent blamed his outlook on life on his father and described Yozo as 'easy-going’ and 'amusing’ unless he drank. She claims that Yozo was a 'good boy’. I don’t know if that was the case. He spent his entire life attempting to be what he feared most. I don’t believe it was humanity he feared. But rejection. For it scared him more than anything.
Well, that was not the review I was going for (sorry). Read at your own risk is all I can say. No Longer Human wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It just was.
Edit: Now that I’ve had all this time to think about it, maybe the book title isn’t as misleading as it seems. Maybe Yozo was human from the beginning, and his pursuit of falling into the norm and being what he expected others to expect of him is where he began to lose his humanity. (I’m just waffling at this point.)
That’s mainly what I took from this book. In all honesty, the title is quite misleading. The title makes the reader assume that this strange and complex concept of humanity is somehow lost. To be lost means that humanity had to have been obtained in the first place. The main character, Yozo, never seemed to have acquired this ‘Humanity’ throughout any part of the book.
Seeing Yozo’s life through his retelling allowed me to understand how he sees the world. I could see it through his perspective: his upbringing, his school days, even his university days. But alas, he never achieved humanity. He loathed it. The idea of being human was a fear of his. One that he craved yet despised. He believed that humans had a natural propensity to be insincere and only did favours in anticipation of being owed one later. That fear of humans made it so difficult for him to form genuine and meaningful relationships with any of the other characters presented throughout the novel. Instead, later in life, he had developed a sense of familiarity with prostitutes. He didn’t see them as human (I don’t think he meant in a way to offend the working women). The prostitutes were honest; they didn’t throw false pretences, and they usually expected nothing much from him as long as they received their due pay. For this reason, he saw them as inhuman. Deviants from society who didn’t fit into its natural order. He saw them as idiotic and daft, as if he had some higher intelligence (which he may have had, since he seemed to always be at the top of his classes, even though he wouldn’t dedicate even a tick of time to studying). But he never seemed to be able to utilise that intelligence to realise that if he had been honest from the start, even if some may have rejected him, there were people who would have accepted him as he was.
During his university days, we truly see the nature of Yozo’s inhumanity. He meets different people from different classes. He realises he wants to be a painter, but he backs out instead of telling his father this. He then meets a group of Marxists, and yet again, instead of telling them his true thoughts, he follows them aimlessly. He meets woman after woman, and instead of rejecting their unwanted advances like any normal individual, he tolerates them for whatever reason. In all honesty, I don’t understand Yozo. I didn’t while reading the book, and I definitely don’t now. Even the 'friend’ he makes during his university days is just a consequence of Yozo being unable to speak his mind (although, to Yozo, this friendship did have its benefits; Yozo no longer had to play 'the clown’ and was later introduced to tobacco, alcohol, and prostitutes). Then he gets kicked out of university for his poor attendance at classes he didn’t want to attend in the first place.
Honestly, Yozo was a downer. He saw nothing but negativities. And in the moments that he found someone who could bring the notion of his humanity to fruition (through the ideologies of love), it was stripped from him. Well, instead, he ruined it. He had found his match, someone who saw life just as badly as he did. And that never boded well. Their negativity just topped one another, leading them to both seek an escape from the torments of life. Ultimately, Yozo was forced to live life alone, again, inhuman.
At some point, much later in the book, he gets married for the second time (his first marriage was inconsequential as he spent most of it in a drunken stupor). This second marriage had its bright sides, to say the least. He truly loved his wife (or so I believe) for her naivety and overly trusting nature. She never expected to be double-crossed or to double-cross anyone. She was honest to a fault. The complete opposite of him. She trusted Yozo in everything he did and said. And for that, he loved her, not in a natural sense, but in a sense at least. And as they say, all good things must come to an end.
The aspect he loved most in his wife was the reason they broke apart. She was taken advantage of by a man of no fundamental importance to the story, but the aftereffects of the assault led to Yozo despising his wife. Although he knew it was not his wife’s fault, he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that his precious virgin lady (he did have a strange obsession with the fact that she was a maiden when they married. I have no clue what that was about) had been defiled by another man. Leading him to seek out alcohol yet again. Which, in turn, ruined their marriage. His wife became reclusive and barely spoke even to him. Her shy and soft personality had taken on a depressing and saddening state. And Yozo couldn’t stand it. After this, he had sought out a pharmacy for drugs to help him with his ailments, but the lady working there had offered him some opioids instead, which he later became reliant on instead of the spirits. This led him into further decline. But he believed the drugs made him human in a way. He was active and outgoing. He didn’t fear communication and wasn’t scared of rebuttal. He was alive.
Then he hit his limit. I can’t remember specifically what happened at this point since I finished the book some days ago. Still, he ended up in the hospital (which ended up being a madhouse) as a result of his sponsor’s (Flatfish) efforts and a friend of his (who wasn’t even really a friend in any sense of the word). Months later, his family gave him an ultimatum and sent him to live in a rural village where there were no women, except an older lady who worked there as a servant. He lives there for the next three years.
At this point, my brain was fried. I don’t know if it was due to a lack of understanding on my part, or the translation, or whether the book intentionally makes the reader want to poke their brains out.
In the end, we never know what happens to Yozo after this. We don’t know if he is alive, dead, or human.
Reminder: He’s 27 at this point in the book.
The madam who worked at the bar that Yozo used to frequent blamed his outlook on life on his father and described Yozo as 'easy-going’ and 'amusing’ unless he drank. She claims that Yozo was a 'good boy’. I don’t know if that was the case. He spent his entire life attempting to be what he feared most. I don’t believe it was humanity he feared. But rejection. For it scared him more than anything.
Well, that was not the review I was going for (sorry). Read at your own risk is all I can say. No Longer Human wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It just was.
Edit: Now that I’ve had all this time to think about it, maybe the book title isn’t as misleading as it seems. Maybe Yozo was human from the beginning, and his pursuit of falling into the norm and being what he expected others to expect of him is where he began to lose his humanity. (I’m just waffling at this point.)