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Symbols
Yozo’s interest in art—and specifically painting—symbolizes his desire to somehow express his feelings of horror and revulsion in response to everyday life. When Takeichi comes over one day and insists that Van Gogh’s famous self-portrait is actually a portrait of a ghost, Yozo suddenly realizes that art doesn’t always have to depict beautiful, pleasant things. To the contrary, art can be challenging and disturbing, and Yozo takes comfort in the idea that many of history’s most successful painters must have seen the world as a wretched place and then decided to depict that wretchedness in their art. This, he comes to believe, is a way for people to face depravity head-on instead of constantly running from it, which is what he has been doing by “clowning” around and trying to act like a silly, jovial person. He thus decides to stop drawing meaningless cartoons and start painting unsettling portraits, and though he only shows his work to Takeichi, the paintings come to represent his gravitation toward self-expression, ultimately suggesting that even the most private people find themselves drawn to anything that helps them make sense of their worldview.
Painting Quotes in No Longer Human
The No Longer Human quotes below all refer to the symbol of Painting. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Second Notebook
Quotes
There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are—the quicker to take fright—the more violent they pray that every storm will be…Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms—they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared.
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The pictures I drew were so heart-rending as to stupefy even myself. Here was the true self I had so desperately hidden. I had smiled cheerfully; I had made others laugh; but this was the harrowing reality. I secretly affirmed this self, was sure that there was no escape from it, but naturally I did not show my pictures to anyone except Takeichi.
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Get the entire No Longer Human LitChart as a printable PDF.
Painting Symbol Timeline in No Longer Human
The timeline below shows where the symbol Painting appears in No Longer Human. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Second Notebook
...day, Takeichi comes over to Yozo’s house and shows him a reproduction print of a painting that Yozo recognizes as Van Gogh’s self-portrait. Takeichi, however, says that the painting is of...
(full context)
...bravely paint the grotesque side of humanity that he sees on a daily basis. The paintings he makes are—to his estimation—horrifying, but they accurately represent his truest self. He only shows...
(full context)
Takeichi, for his part, thinks Yozo will become a great painter. Upon finishing high school, Yozo wants to attend art school, but his father sends him...
(full context)
...his time either meeting with the Communist Party or drinking with Horiki. His schoolwork and painting suffer, but he doesn’t care—and then, he says, he becomes embroiled in a “love suicide”...
(full context)
The Third Notebook: Part One
Eventually, Yozo says that he’d like to work as a painter. Flatfish can’t believe his ears. He laughs and looks at Yozo scornfully, and his look...
(full context)
