[Book] Review: No Longer Human

人間失格, also known as No Longer Human is a book written by Osamu Dazai. It is a book that I bought last week (from the time of this writing) and also another book that I finish in 2 days. It is a really good book, and when I finish the book, I knew that I wanted to write a review of this book. This blog, unlike any other blogs that I had written before, is a review of the book instead of some very technical analysis on the subject being discussed. Part of the reason is that this book is believed to be a fictionize autobiography of the author himself as a lot of things happen on the protagonist happens on the author at some point of his life, and it is a story narrating how alienated he is from other people. Another reason is that while there is not a lot to analyze, feelings gain from reading the book is more important than trying to analyze and interpret it as correct as possible. What more important and charming in this book is to experience the character (or the author) feelings.

The book started with when the protagonist is still a child. When he is a child, he already has a sense of alienation from other people. This is partly due to a strict culture which Japanese stick on to. The protagonist, unable to understand the inference of these cultures, started to feel more and more distant from other people. This eventually leads to protagonist putting on a facade where he pretending to be a clown so he could avoid trouble with other people.

The vibe of alienation just goes on the whole book. In the book, Japanese culture sort of act as a very important part of the book, like how Japanese hold on to the pride of something above even relationship connected with blood. This, perhaps, also contribute to the process of alienation.

So, the protagonist put on a facade where he pretending to be a clown. He will purposely learn the behavior or some comedian, learn the joke to tell people, or even purposely embarrass himself to achieve the comedy effect. There is one time when he is in high school, during physical education period, where they do some kind of pull up, he purposely fall on the floor so people could laugh at it. However, there is this one classmate who sees through him for putting on the facade. This makes him feel so scared that he tries to do a lot of things to get the person onto his side so that no people will know about him putting on the facade.

What happened after that is he successfully make friend with the person. What very interesting about this book is the self-consciousness of the protagonist in the whole book. The protagonist is very conscious about his behavior of putting on the facade, every detail of inner thought that went through him, and he felt right after whatever happened. The thought process of the protagonist makes this book so interesting. It makes you not only able to see the face value of the story, but also from the first person perspective from the protagonist.

It’s very interesting to be able to see why the protagonist do what he does. Throughout the story, the protagonist knows that he is very attractive towards women. At one point in the novel, the protagonist is addicted to alcohol for escaping his existential vacuum. However, the protagonist runs out of money, yet he still went to one of the bars where he knows a woman inside is attracted to him to ask for sake. He went in, told the women he doesn’t have a single cents, and the woman treats him with sake and slept with the women after that. The thought process of the protagonist wanting to drink alcohol, thinking about those women which love him, and thinking about how to get alcohol and how he treats the women that love him, everything is just so interesting about this book.

Most interesting of all is how he interacts with people that he knows where they are having the same alienation inner thought. It’s very hard to even imagine living such lives. Such precise inner thought might only be possible because these are exactly the same thought that the author had experience throughout his life.

Of course, there isn’t proof that the author had experienced the exact inner thought. However, many things that happen in the novel had happened to the author at one point in his life. In the novel, the protagonist attempt suicide with a woman by jumping into the river. The protagonist survived but the woman had died, and he is charged for accomplice suicide and disowned by his family. The very same thing happen to the author where he suicides with a bar hostess Shimeko Tanabe. The bar hostess died and he survives and is charged for accomplice suicide and disowned by family.

At one point in the novel, the wife of the protagonist is raped by a stranger. In the novel, the protagonist saw it and did not take any action against that. The author’s wife committed adultery with one of his best friends when he is in a mental institution, and they commit double suicide after author finding out the events. There are a lot of similarities between the character and the author himself, and these are just 2 out of many examples. The lists of evidence can go on and I make no attempt to exhaust the evidence.

Overall, it is a very interesting book. When the author finishes writing this book, he makes another attempt to suicide and finally succeeded upon numerous suicide attempt. Certainly, it is not a very happy book, but I think it is a very nice book to read and to be able to sort of experience a journey which is completely different from us. I rate this book 10/10, and if you are interested in this book, grab it from any bookstore or contact me and borrow from me and I would be happy to do so.