BROTHER FROM ANOTHER MOTHER: THE NARRATORIAL STRUCTURE OF OSAMU DAZAI’S NO LONGER HUMAN AND ALBERT CAMUS’ THE STRANGER

Abstract

The research project focuses on the analysis of narration in Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human (人間失格, 1948) in comparison with Albert Camus’s The Stranger (L’Étranger, 1942). How do the circular/linear structure and the I-Novel (shishōsetsu is an old Asian genre of autofiction confession novels) genre conventions affect the absence of a climax in the narrative of those novels? In most of the past English-language articles and essays (Hoye 2011; Muratore 2011; Ueda 1990; Wolfe 1990), the nature of Dazai’s and Camus’ narrative has been closely related to the thematic pattern of suicidal narrative or existentialism and the surface-level of basic plot symbolisms. Not much of a comparative analysis has been done in narratological terms except for informal online posts examining similarities between Dazai and Camus. The capstone project seeks to fill that gap and deepen our understanding of non-Western narrative by addressing No Longer Human as a unique piece that might reform even some basic theoretical categories within the narrative theory field. That is because the Eastern narrative tradition was mostly autonomously developing its unique plotless narration till the 19th century and then was affected by Western cultures (Wolfe 15). Dazai is a member of the 3rd generation of modern Japanese writers affected by Western literature and yet he is called the last I-Novel, which makes his novel a mix of both traditions (Lyons 4; Wolfe XV). This kind of unique work always broadens the understanding of possible borders that literary prose can achieve. The main findings were obtained by close reading and delineation of general narrative terms such as focalization, narrator, and climax, conceptualized by Gérard Genette (1983). They are used to show how the generic concepts of the Japanese I-Novel we may trace in both works either follow or do not fit the established categories. By this I mean the feature of I-Novel being strongly autobiographical and plotless, while Western authors traditionally were detached from the work and prose was strongly plot-based. The prologue and suicide scene for No Longer Human show the two-levelled narration, biographical origins and detachment. The murder scene and confession scene for The Stranger show the climax point that changes the narration and plotless nature of the novel. Those scenes provide most of the narrative devices and carry the same false climax points. Analysis showed the presence of narrative circularity and two unreliable narrators in No Longer Human. The final step is to contrast Dazai’s narrative discourse to Camus’s much less polymorphic linear structure. One of the unforeseen discoveries is the nature of The Stranger as the French variation of the I-Novel, followed by more similarities in the background of the genesis of novels. The autobiographical notion is easily traced in The Stranger, the same as the personal beliefs are confessed. Finding notions of I-Novel outside of Asia can be the new approach to analysing non-Asian literature in narratological terms. It can help to trace the development of literary traditions and potentially find or predict the future modifications of prose fiction.