Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl is one of the most important literary works in Persian language. The central theme of the story is an attempt toward the resolution of the writer/narrator's dualistic experiences of the real versus unreal, the sensual against the spiritual and death as opposed to life. Underlying his problems are sexual fear, association of women with death (a common theme in literature) and disgust affiliated with death/women. Machado de Assis' Philosopher or Dog? presents an interesting but intriguing main character. Quincas Borba, who denotes not only the eponymous (possibly mad) philosopher whose credo of ``Humanism'' disastrously misleads his disciple Rubio, but also Borbas's dog (and namesake) in which form Rubio believes his mentor's soul is reincarnated. An unreliable narrator presents many complications with the reading. The narrators of The Blind Owl and Philosopher or Dog? are both concerned with relatioships, women, and power.
             In The Blind Owl it is important to understand the narrator's symbolism of his perception of the female characters. An in depth study of such symbolism reveals that the narrator is unconsciously treating the women of his creation as blank screens onto which he is casting various aspects of his personality that he can not consciously acknowledge. In order to penetrate to the heart of the narrator's problems of identity and being, one might also relate the experience of mothering and of women to problems of dependence and ego weakness.
             It is possible to suggest that the narrator is suffering from a split in personality and is trying to integrate a split off female element. In reality he is projecting a dread and fear of his own female element. In such cases the whole problem of women is bound up with ones' own attitudes to "oneself" and it is always the female element that is dissociated in both men and women
             The search for the ideal woman continues. His wife becomes the sam...