“A shadow that is following Yusof” Analyzing the male protagonist’s tension in a modern Persian fiction through Jung’s psychoanalytic theories

This essay analyzes a modern Persian fiction, Days and Nights of Yusof, as an example of a youngster who is entering his adulthood in a male-centered society, Iran. It illustrates how the writer of the fiction, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, displays a boy s tensions due to the society s expectations as he is passing through his pubescence. To do so, the essay introduces Mahmoud Dowlatabadi and his style of writing in Days and Nights of Yusof; then it describes Carl Jung s psychoanalytic theories that have been used as a method to analyze the fiction. Afterward, it goes through the novel and displays the story s relevance to the method in order to answer the central question that is posed in the paper. With a summary of the fiction, the essay analyzes the protagonist s name and its relation to the main argument of the article. Thereupon, it discusses yousof’s persona, Anima, and shadow that are three concepts in Jung’s theory, it depicts his relationship with his family which happens to be patriarchal, and it portrays the way he deals with the masculinity that tries to overcome him. While numerous critics have discussed Mahmoud Dowlatabadi s style of writing in this fiction, few discussed the protagonist s central conflict: escaping from the masculine characteristics that the male-centered society expects from a man. Thus, this essay presents a different kind of domination in a male-centered society and the destructive consequences that affect both women and men s lives.