Despair in Asian literature: exploring Dazai Osamu’s No Longer Human in the light of existentialism, absurdism & critical disability theory
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Date
2022-05Publisher
Brac UniversityAuthor
Tofa, Halima HasinMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Despair is common to the human experience regardless of any facet of one’s identity. In the
course of studying literature in English, we often have little exposure to Asian literature
despite Asian literature also exhibiting these themes such an existential crisis and despair.
This paper attempts to make an effort in addressing the huge gap between Western and Asian
literature by exploring the protagonist’s despair from the famous modern Japanese I-novel No
Longer Human (人間失格). In an attempt to provide more dimensions to further the purpose of
this paper, Yozo’s character and despair is also compared to Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov and
Underground man, Camus’ Sisyphus and Meursault, and lastly Murakami’s Kafka Tamura
and Toru Watanabe. Viewed under the lens of Sartre’s Existentialism, Camus’ Absurdism
and Critical Disability Theory, the paper aims to analyze Yozo’s despair and find the ways
the individual self interacted with modern Japanese society.
Keywords
Asian literature; Modern Japanese literature; Dazai Osamu; Existentialism; Absurdism; DespairDescription
This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English, 2022.Department
Department of English and Humanities, Brac UniversityType
ThesisCollections
- Thesis, B.A. (English) [595]