Where there is a deep insecurity of existence, this male dynamic is employed as a substitute for female element of 'being'. In a masculine society such as Iran, a great deal of the contemporary culture needs to be explained in terms of the development of modes of false strength, which are based on a certain kind of male dynamic. 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. In reality he is projecting a dread and fear of his own female element.

Then 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. Relating by active doing, knowing by thinking and communicating through verbal symbols is normally associated with the male element of knowing, while knowing by feeling and communicating through emotional empathy constitutes female element of relating. Accepting male and female elements as the two aspects of the same personality, we may also see them as relating to modes of knowing and dealing with the world. 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. 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. It is important to understand the narrator's symbolism of his perception of the female characters. Underlying his problems are sexual fear, association of women with death (a common theme in literature) and disgust affiliated with death/women. 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. Sadeq Hedayat's 'The Blind Owl' is one of the most important literary works in Persian language. Symbolism of women in Hedayat's 'Blind Owl'

The blind owl by sadegh hedayat