This childhood sexual abuse sets the tone for the rest of Supposing I complained to my father or my mother, or to the police, the government–I wondered if in the end I would not be argued into silence by someone in good graces with the world, by the excuses of which the world approved.” To appeal for help to any human being–I could expect nothing from that expedient. If I had formed the habit of telling the truth I might perhaps have been able to confide unabashedly to my father or mother about the crime, but I could not fully understand even my own parents. I even felt as if it enabled me to see one more particular aspect of human beings. I now think that to perpetrate such a thing on a small child is the ugliest, vilest, cruelest crime a human being can commit. Already by that time I had been taught a lamentable thing by the servants I was being corrupted. “My true nature, however, was one diametrically opposed to the role of a mischievous imp. Result of being sexually abused by his family’s servants as a child. I think his problems are partly in his nature and partly a Thinks he is vulgar, weak, and cowardly, so far below humanity as to not be aĪs I reread it, there were two main questions in my mind: To say he has low self-esteem is an understatement. The protagonist, Oba Yozo, is a young man who feels like he is at

No Longer Human is a semi-autobiographicalĬonfessional novel about depression, anxiety, alienation, drug abuse, and Everything is there, but if you blink, you’ll miss it. No Longer Human is short (about 170 pages) butĭeceptively complex. Reread No Longer Human, and it seemed to come into place. I looked up Osamu Dazai’s biography and then I tried to sit down and review it a few weeks ago, but I felt like Iĭidn’t understand it well enough. I originally read this on a plane, quickly, without much

Dazai book