Oba cannot feel happiness, he is stuck in a deep depression to the point that nothing matters. The approach to this mindset though is a stark difference, Meursault does not show or feel emotions. Everything passes.”(169) Oba is a reflective person, Meursault just accepts his belief, “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”(122) Meursault feels too little and finds life meaningless and on the flip side, Oba Yozo feels too much, too inferior, that he finds life meaningless. That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell. I think this line from No Longer Human Shows their similar mental state well, “Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

The two books have the same destination, or rather these two characters have the same outlook on life but have different ways of getting there.

¨ No Longer Humanīoth these lines pull the reader in through uncomfortability, from the get-go they leave the impression of being an outsider and mentally peculiar, not being normal. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” The Stranger To grasp this better, the following are both books opening lines: An aspect of these two characters that binds them together is their indifference to other people and life itself. However, both of these characters bring about a feeling of unease and emptiness to the reader.

While Meursault the narrator of The Stranger is very nonchalant and emotionally dull. The main character in No Longer Human, Oba Yozo, is a more sensitive and emotional person but feels no joy, only an overwhelming feeling of estrangement.

Through further inspectional and revisiting of No Longer Human, I’ve found that the two books, especially the characters, are both opposites and somewhat parallel. As I’ve been reading The Stranger by Albert Camus this last week or so, I have constantly been reflecting and comparing it to a previous book I´d read this summer, No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai.

Dazai osamu no longer human