The Blind Owl

The dominant theme and structure of The Blind Owl is the tension between modernity and tradition in the narrator’s experience of Iranian life and culture. The narrator feels alienated and adrift in the present, continuously trying and failing to navigate, or even escape from, the pressures of both past and present that surround him.

The form of the narrative is itself demonstrative of tensions between tradition and modernity. The text is broadly divided between two narrative forms, one in each part. The first form is the narrator telling a parable that is rich in symbolism and has a fable-like logic. The second form is the narrator writing a more realistic account of the same events he recounted in parable form. The first part of the narrative is a symbolic representation of traditional Persian literature, as it contains imagery and events evocative of mystical, idealized literary forms common in the Persian classics, particularly a beautiful woman who enchants the narrator in an ecstatic vision brought on by wine. In the second part of the narrative, the young woman is portrayed more realistically: Instead of an idealized virginal woman, she is the narrator’s own pregnant wife who expresses and acts upon sexual desire.