In Search of Self-Knowledge in Missing Soluch

This study discusses self-knowledge and its possibility in literary works, particularly in novel proper. Novels can depict the development and change of characters and are an ideal form to portray the self-knowledge that characters gain as they grow up. I inquire into the limitations that a literary work places on both the author and the reader’s imagination. Whether to attempt to depict or to defy the real world, literary imagination is checked by outside reality. On the other hand, the reality itself is framed by the literary work to be representable and expressible for the literary medium which either narrates or depicts objects, thoughts and emotions, and events. The narrator can relate the characters to the readers who can connect with the characters’ thoughts and emotions. On this account the possibility of self-knowledge is probed in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s novel, Missing Soluch, and how both the characters and the readers are engaged in the story’s events. For the purposes of this paper, I set out to explore the kinds of knowledge we gain by reading the novel, contrast the epic with the novel in order to see how they portray a character’s thoughts and emotions, and discuss the importance of narrative in a character’s development.