The Resonance of Postcolonialism in Hedayat’s Stray Dog

Abstract

Sadegh Hedayat’s The Stray Dog oscillates between two geographical locales, native homeland and the land of his master where he spent a part of his life there, Europe. This story can be read as the manifestation of the Iranian identity dilemma which is defined as a confused situation in which a sense of “sardargomi va sargashtegi” “confusion and wandering” began to materialize in the main character. This article, through analyzing the story as an allegorical story, will seek to explain the distinctive problem and condition of displacement encountered by an Iranian writer which arise feelings of isolation, estrangement, internal and external psychological trauma which at large prevents identities to be formed at either end and leads into final self destruction and death in Nolandia. Key words: Self; Other; Unhomely; Sargashtegi; Sargardan