the setting sun

I just finished reading Osamu Dazai's novel The Setting Sun that was written right after World War 2 but was published after he committed suicide.  The novel was made into a movie in Japan a couple of years ago but I haven't had a chance to see it yet.   The book jacket says it "probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society."  As usual, the literary reviewers see more (or imagine more?) than I do.  To me, it's an interesting narrative about some sad characters struggling along in quiet desperation.

The best lines in the book take place after the daughter is told by a doctor that her mother has TB and will die:

"This was the first time in my life that I had become aware of the existence of the wall of despair built of all the many things in the world before which human strength is helpless."

I think everyone finds themselves in such a place at sometime in their life.  But somehow, we always seem to find a way around the wall of despair.