A review by __offsetpaper__
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

4.5

 
TW: Suicide, Sexual assault

From time to time, we all struggle to find meaning in our existence. Some devote themselves to religion or science, some to music, some to watch football matches from morning to night and try to make sense of the emptiness inside them or make them forget it. 

Some people are unlucky, they have an innate extra restlessness or weakness and they cannot suppress it. They spend their lives in an endless melancholy, trying to find meaning and the troubles this creates.  

The main character in this novel is exactly such a person. He realizes his incompatibility from a very young age, so he starts to "pretend" at a very early age, which we all do sometimes. How can we face this when everything seems so ordinary and even meaningless? Don't we all try to convince ourselves that everything is fine, that we are even happy, that our lives have meaning? Our main character has a hard time doing this and, as the name of the book suggests, gradually loses his humanity.

“No Longer Human” tells the story of a man who never truly finds a connection with other human beings and thus falls into despair, destroying himself and the people around him along the way. The book is narrated in the first person by Yozo and divided into three parts, classified as notebooks. The main character, who wears a mask in front of society because he is unable to show his true self due to the irrational fear he feels towards human beings. We start from his early childhood until he is twenty years old and throughout the writing we live that constant, hard struggle to fit into society, to adapt to being as others expect.

“As long as I can make them laugh, it won’t matter how, I’ll be all right. If I succeed in that, the human beings probably won’t mind it too much if I remain outside their lives.”

Dazai's writing style is simple, sombre and develops a purely intimate plot that breaks down the protagonist's extreme and lonely thoughts in an extremely incredible way. One of the most important elements is the ease with which death is talked about and the ease with which suicide attempts are raised and even the crudeness with which the woman is treated in this writing.

From the very first sentences, the book throws the reader into a deep swamp of trauma, fear, phobia and nihilism. It tells the story of a man who felt deficient all his life to such an extent that he finally even lost his humanity and the ability to live in harmony with the world and society.

It is a manifesto to all people who feel different, who never manage to adapt and who hide in an unhappy life lacking happiness or meaning. No Longer Human is one of those novels that break the soul, that make you reflect and that undoubtedly represent an effort worthy of reward.

Even though the book can be read in one day, it requires a lot of empathy and understanding from the reader for the main character. "Perdition" is the last completed novel by Osamu Dazai, published after his suicide. It's hard for me to evaluate this book based on the plot due to the fact that the hero of the novel is the alter ego of the author himself. 
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