No Longer Human

“But I think that anyone who had ever been subjected to the least exposure to what makes for beauty would likely toss the photograph aside with the gesture employed in brushing away a caterpillar, and mutter in profound revulsion, ‘What a dreadful child!’”

Yozo’s childhood photograph reflects his inherent “inhumanity” from an early age. While on the surface, he appears to be an ordinary child, the photograph manages to capture his inner turmoil. Unable to connect with others in a meaningful way, the boy’s expression causes revulsion in the viewer.

“The face in the second snapshot is startlingly unlike the first. He is a student in this picture, although it is not clear whether it dates from high school or college days. At any rate, he is now extraordinarily handsome. But here again the face fails inexplicably to give the impression of one belonging to a living human being.”

The revulsion that Yozo’s childhood photograph elicits gives way to a subtler feeling of wrong. A handsome young man, Yozo has nearly perfected his childhood disguise. The artificiality of his smile belies his good looks, however, indicating the depth of his isolation and rendering him unpleasant to look at.

“I think that even a death mask would hold more of an expression, leave more of a memory. That effigy suggests nothing so much as a human body to which a horse’s head has been attached. Something ineffable makes the beholder shudder in distaste. I have never seen such an inscrutable face on a man.”

The final photograph of Yozo depicts his status at the end of the novel. His health is ruined, and he is a hollow husk of a man who has given up all agency. He has turned his belief that he is disqualified as a human being into reality, and the unnamed narrator recognizes this instinctively. Yozo leaves no memory, just an indefinable distaste in the mind of the narrator.