The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
The narrator is only capable of replaying the same images and scenes repeatedly, whether he is awake or asleep: a bruised morning glory flower, a crouching old man in a turban, a stunning young woman in a black dress, a bone-handled knife, a glazed jug, a butcher. These fits of uncontrollable laughter and shrieking punctuate the narrator’s nightmare existence. As he becomes increasingly aloof from “the rabble” — his dismissive word for the incomprehensible individuals who inhabit the world beyond his apartment — and waits for death to give him the release he has been pleading for, his only companion left is his shadow. Our narrator uses opium to deal with his excruciating discomfort, which furthers his hallucinating state throughout the story.
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
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This novella is a must-read for everyone who enjoys psychological thrillers, imaginative writing, and foreign literature. It is brilliant in both form and content. A man who is both physically and emotionally unwell serves as our narrator. He hastily records the events that lead to his present state—where he is covered in blood and ready to be arrested. His chosen audience is his owl-like shadow, which is seen in the room he’s been imprisoned in for what seems like an eternity.
Our narrator was born to an Indian temple dancer mother and a young merchant father. When his mother is seduced by the identical twin brother of his father, she comes up with a test. The two men are required to enter a dim room that contains a poisonous snake. The woman will belong to whoever survives. The door opens after a spine-tingling scream, and his uncle, who has white hair and mental instability, emerges. The narrator is left in the care of his paternal aunt when his paternal uncle and mother depart from the city. When the narrator’s cousin’s daughter (his aunt’s daughter) starts to resemble her as she gets older, he decides to accept the girl as his wife because he has grown to love his aunt so much.
He convinces himself that this young girl is a whore who has several partners while refusing him any physical touch in an effort to punish him, and she becomes the focus of his lifelong obsession, jealousy, and paranoia. In actuality, it looks like he kidnaps the little girl forcibly so that, in accordance with family tradition, they will force him to wed her. Eventually, he puts himself onto his wife again during one of his manic episodes, stabs her, and then dismembers her body. However, the way the novel is written makes it impossible to know whether this is a genuine murder or just another of his bizarre hallucinations, nightmares, or taunts from his conscience.
Our narrator is untrustworthy because, as he admits, the memories he recalls are neither of location nor time. Characters tend to merge into one another: His acts are frequently no different from those of his father, uncle, the butcher down the street, or the elderly grave digger, all of whom may be the same guy! His mother, wife, aunt, and nanny are all in agreement. But despite these indistinguishable events and people from his past, he is certain of one thing: his solitude and loneliness in a life without meaning or purpose. Only his preoccupation with dying and being eliminated from his sad existence rivals his passion for having his wife.
