In the Darkness of Being: A Heideggerian Reading of “Dasein” and “Thrownness” in Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Ow

Author
Mohsen Sarebannejad
Ph.D., Advanced Studies of Art College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
This article offers a Heideggerian reading of The Blind Owl, the most influential modern Persian novel by Sadegh Hedayat, as a literary embodiment of existential and phenomenological experience. Rather than interpreting the novel through psychological or symbolic lenses, this study approaches it as an ontological field in which the structures of Dasein—such as anxiety, death, thrownness, and alienation—unfold through narrative form and language. By drawing on Heidegger’s concepts of Being-in-the-world and Being-toward-death, the article argues that the narrator’s solitude, fragmented self, and disrupted temporality are manifestations of existential homelessness, where language ceases to function as the “house of Being” and instead becomes a site of estrangement. The methodology is interpretive–hermeneutical, focusing on a close textual analysis of the novel through the lens of phenomenological ontology. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that The Blind Owl transcends psychological despair and constitutes a modern literary exploration of the human condition in confrontation with nothingness. Through its fractured narrative and poetic ambiguity, Hedayat’s work transforms philosophical reflection into literary experience, allowing Being to reveal itself within the very darkness of existence.
Keywords
Heidegger
Dasein
existentialism
Phenomenology
The Blind Owl
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