“No Longer Human” by Osamu Dazai (post 2): “Split inconsistent narrative” and Yozo’s secondary “sitting duck syndrome”

Do the first and second halves of this novel have different narrator personalities in charge? Search “split inconsistent narrative” to read discussions of this in other novels.

In the second half of this novel, after his wife is assaulted and he fails to protect her, Yozo says “This was truly the decisive incident of my life. I had been split through the forehead between the eyebrows” (1, p. 149).

In contrast, the narrator of the first half might have said that the decisive incident of Yozo’s life had been his nightly child abuse by servants, which he had never told anyone about (see previous post).

Indeed, repetitive trauma in childhood is the kind of trauma most commonly associated with the development of multiple personality, and it might have predisposed Yozo to experience an adult trauma as a “split” in his head.

Why couldn’t Yozo take action when his wife was raped? Some people with multiple personality who had suffered sexual abuse in childhood are more vulnerable to revictimization as adults, which has been called the “sitting duck syndrome.” And when Yozo’s wife was raped, his identification with her might have made him feel paralyzed and unable to take decisive action.

1. Osamu Dazai. No Longer Human [1948]. Translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene, 1958. New York, New Directions Paperback, 1973.