A Psychoanalytical Reading of the Narrative of River's End based on the Ideas of Sigmund Freud

The River’s End story is among those stories which have a dream-like structure. In this article we have tried to analyze this story and its method of meaning making by a psychoanalytical reading based on Freud’s ideas. This reading includes two layers: 1- The overt or surface structure of the story. 2- The covert or deep structure of the story. In the overt layer it would be demonstrated that the story has a conceptual structure and its occurrences are narrated in a disorganized plot in which the causality and time sequence are not kept. In the covert layer we have distinguished between metaphoric and deleted plot. In the metaphorical plot, the symbols of the narrative text of the River’s End has been detected and two symbols of Zayandeh-Rood river and Gavkhuni River’s End as two prevalent symbols which show the female sex and the return to the fetus are analyzed. Many of the characters based on their relationship to these two symbols are psychoanalyzed. In the deleted plot the relationship between the narrator with the pleasure principle and death principle are analyzed until the unending suspension of the narrator in the process of fate, repetition, and movement toward death is defined.