Raskolnikov could find solace in the dejected and personally justified opium induced violence present in Blind Owl, and the inept and desperate attempts to solitarily tidy a life filled with overflowing madness. Our narrator treats himself and views his own life like a rotten fruit, the alcoholic rot and stench of a rotting food similarly emanating from his own past due selfhood. His precious but squandered life combined with the ingesting of such large amounts of opium provides a madness inducing sensation, driving our narrator to quickly spiral, reaching a distance so far from himself he proclaims a need to “introduce himself to his shadow“ before it’s too late. “—my life was meant to be poisoned— I could not have any life but a poisoned one.” The imagery evoked and exploratory language expressed, like a song stuck in his head, repeat certain phrases and ideas in our narrators mind, each time leaving him a little less sure of their meaning, unaware of any reliability in these real and contrived images he is seeing and communicating, shallowly trusting no one else but himself, the most unreliable. Blind Owl takes a broken man and chronicles his descent into madness and murder, the book rife with the stench of unfazed death, intoxicated isolation, and starving and blind despair. The novel translates similarly to an amalgamation of the hopeless existentialism of Russian lit, which Hedayat is said to have been fond of, and the haunting graphic imagery and metaphorical language reminiscent of ancient storytelling. A quick but unsettling read, as ominous as seeing an owl in the middle of the day, and knowing its stomach is full of small fragile bones.
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