The Price of Fitting In

 

The Price of Fitting In

Throughout all our lives, whether it’s for writing college essays or for making true friends, we’re continuously reminded to “be yourself!” so much so that this phrase has become quite the banal platitude. But is anyone truly themselves? Moreover, is it moral to falsely present yourself to be more “likable” to others? Sure, maybe for a job interview, it's understandable that you don’t tell your employer that you don't really care about how this investment banking position can help others, and you just want the big bucks. But what about your fiancé? Would you hide the fact that you're 30k into credit card debt from him because you don't want your love story to end? In many ways, all of us ultimately do conform to societal norms and put on different masks based on our environment.

I, for one, find myself frequently code-switching based on who I’m around, whether that’s being obnoxiously loud with my friends, the shy reserved one at extended family gatherings, or the pseudo-intellectual when asked to explain a concept that I don’t understand. When I’m acting a bit differently than normal, people are quick to ask, “Are you okay?” Although this comes with caring intent, it carries the assumption that I’m not behaving the way I’m supposed to. 

Sometimes I even laugh at jokes that make zero sense to me, just because people around me are laughing. I fear being left out. I fear it so much that I haven’t given much thought to what it feels like to be alienated. I thought of alienation to just be synonymous with being physically lonely, but then I saw Mersault and Yōzō live surrounded by others, with Yōzō even being particularly popular with girls, yet still enduring extreme alienation from society. I became intrigued to figure out how their internal and external behaviors went against what’s “acceptable” morally, emotionally, and expressively, leading to them becoming alienated.
These characters allow us to explore causes of alienation from opposite directions. Meursault is alienated because society judges his emotional indifference as a danger to society. While Yōzō is mentally alienated because he internalizes social expectations, and lives life with a mask to the point that he loses any sense of self. These novels, together, suggest that how someone understands love, meaning, and death is not really a personal choice if they seek societal belonging. 

Philosophers have often described societal norms as informal suggestions. But they carry the power to govern what behaviors and beliefs are considered appropriate within a group. These norms don't just regulate how people act, they also control interpretation. For example, norms teach people what grief should look like, and deviation raises suspicion. The failure to follow this very norm ultimately led to Meursault’s execution at the end of the novel. I’ve found myself similarly questioning societal grief at times, but, unlike Meursault, felt scared to share these thoughts, as it felt insensitive to state. Though humans have a natural tendency to mourn the loss of loved ones, I found it to be slightly contradictory that people, with strong beliefs in an eternally good afterlife, still deeply grieve their losses. Perhaps they respond saying it’s the fact that they’re now “separated” which causes their grief, but I’m almost certain learning that your relative is off to Mars (and you’ll never see them again) elicits a different type of sadness than learning that they died during the launch off. These thoughts, though, hopefully acceptable in this assignment, would be seen as quite crazy to say to someone at a funeral. 

In The Stranger, this demand for conformity dominates Meursault’s trial moreso than the crime of killing itself. The prosecutor describes Meursault’s outlook as “an abyss threatening to swallow up society” (Camus, 1942). The court believes that Meursault is dangerous not because he killed a man but because he cannot justify his life in a way that’s acceptable. He’s unable to explain his behavior through a typical moral lens because that feels arbitrary to him. He admits he lived his life the way he did because “it didn’t matter either way” (Camus, 1942). This indifference removes social values from their perceived necessity. Meursault’s existence suggests that meaning may not be guaranteed, something that terrifies the courtroom.
Psychological research helps explain why the courtroom was so fearful. Studies on ostracism reveal that when someone challenges a widely held group belief, debate is skipped in favor of exclusion. Social rejection functions as a defense mechanism to maintain a sense of stability within a group. Meursault’s worldview destabilizes the emotional and moral assumptions others rely on, so society isolates him. Still, despite his feelings of detachment, when he feels like he’s being misrepresented in the court hearing, he states, “I did wish to speak” (Camus, 1942), indicating that he seeks to be understood. 

This desire to be understood is what makes rejection especially painful. Meursault wasn’t trying to get people to be on his side of the case; he simply just wanted to be understood. Unfortunately for our Meursault, ostracism research suggests that groups seldom provide such careful listening to outsiders who challenge their worldviews. People who challenge their views are viewed more as symbols for harmful ideology rather than human beings with reasons. This defense mechanism makes it nearly impossible for outsiders infiltrate, proving that social rejection leads to stability. When Meursault is cast as the stranger, no one in the court registers his explanations as explanations anymore, but rather as proof that he's dangerous. In The Stranger, alienation is not chosen; it’s imposed. 

In contrast, alienation in No Longer Human is more inward. Yōzō survives social life by putting on a mask of a jester, using humor to hide feelings of disconnection with humanity. He has an extreme fear of anyone discovering his honest self-expression. Through Yōzō, Dazai frames self-expression as both essential and risky: people crave spaces to express freely, but those spaces are rare. 

In childhood, Yōzō finds relief through painting. He creates self-portraits that [quote] display parts of him that he hides from the world. He hides these portraits as well, confessing, “Naturally, I did not show my pictures to anyone… I disliked the thought that I might suddenly become subjected to their suspicious vigilance” (Osamu, 1948). At the same time, he feared more that others would dismiss his art as “just some new twist to my clowning.” For Yōzō, the only things worse than being condemned for being himself are never being taken seriously at all. So why intentionally put on the persona of a clown every day? 

A potential explanation is that Yōzo is following the concept of  “Authentic being-for-others” (Aho, 2025), which is described by French philosophers Sartre and Beauvoir. This idea proposes that the self is shaped under “‘the look’ of the Other.” This look has the ability to “take away [Yōzo’s] freedom and make of [Yōzo] an object” (Aho, 2025).  If being seen risks reducing him to a thing or to a joke, clowning becomes a defense mechanism: he objectifies himself first before anyone else can. However, this choice creates a new problem that Sartre describes as original meaning, which is the constant struggle we all face when we try to gain control over how others view us. The never ending societal pressure, and struggle in reaching, the norms set by others made Sartre go as far as to claim that “Hell is—other people.”

As the novel progresses, Yōzō’s mask shifts from protection to humiliation. He refers to his persona as a buffoonery of defeat. He drinks heavily since sobriety forces him to confront himself. He concedes that sitting alone terrifies him, and Yōzō becomes alienated from both society and himself. But this view of alienation is all self-diagnosed from Yōzō’s own perspective, so is it really accurate?

Throughout the narration, it’s clear that Yōzō believes that other people can sense that he is pathetic and guilty. However, in the epilogue of the novel, when the lady working in the bar Yōzō used to frequent is asked about him, she describes him as so easy-going and amusing, even calling him an angel. Earlier, while speaking with his childhood caretaker, Flatfish, Yōzō focused on the ambiguities of his speech rather than trying to understand the emotional undertone of Flatfish looking out for his future. There was a clear disconnect between how Yōzō perceived himself and how the people around him perceived him. Yōzō’s case of alienation can best be diagnosed through one of Dostoevsky’s works, where he states, “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love” (Dostoyevsky),  from this we can interpret that the true tragedy stems from the fact that Yōzō is unable to even believe love and care in the first place. 

Marx’s theory of alienation helps interpret both these texts by emphasizing that alienation is structural rather than personal. Marx argues that certain social arrangements separate individuals from self-expression, even when there’s no threat of harm. From this perspective, we can see that even though Meursault is emotionally flat and Yōzō is insecure, the real problem is that their societies make arbitrary performances of meaning a condition for being treated as fully human. For instance, in Meursault’s trial, the court acts as a modus operandi for protecting communal values; they punish him less for the killing itself than for failing to display typical patterns of grief. In No Longer Human, these expectations are enforced more quietly through social expectations, which make it seem impossible for authentic self-expression to feel acceptable. Yōzō. under this pressure, ends up feeling disqualified from humanity and unable to understand even his own identity. Meursault and Yōzō are shaped by societies that require philosophical conformity to be granted full humanity. 

These novels illustrate that belonging is just a reward for performing how society wants you to. When I code-switch, I stroke my ego, believing that “I’m so adaptable!” but in reality, it’s also fear. The fear of being misread, judged, or maybe even left out and labeled as the stranger that's no longer human. Meursault’s shows that deviating from society's script leads to becoming a threat. While Yōzō illustrates that following the script too closely leads to losing your sense of self and becoming disconnected from reality. Being yourself comes with its drawbacks, literal execution in Meursault’s case, but so does trying to put on a mask, as seen with Yōzō. 

Though I definitely don’t relate to their extreme cases, I can empathize with them in small moments of my life, where I instinctively follow the herd. I still don’t, nor do these texts, have a clean solution for how to live authentically in a society that rewards those who conform to “acceptable” beliefs, but I’ve become more mindful of when I'm performing to please rather than to be understood.