---

Shazdeh Ihtejab by Houshang Golshiri is one of the most valuable examples of Iran’s fictional literature in terms of its use of narrative techniques and devices. Golshiri in Shazdeh Ihtejab has benefitted from various narrative elements; however, it can be argued that the complexity of the narrative techniques of the work is to a great extent due to his use of two elements of “the voice of narrator” and “focalization.” Selecting the limited third person narrator which is restricted to the minds of two main characters of the work (Shazdeh Ihtejab and Fakhri) and offering the thoughts and sayings of these two characters in direct and indirect discourse has caused the voice of the narrator or narrators to be mixed with the perspective of the focalizer or focalizers and has rendered understanding the relation between narrator and focalizer and the difference between the two difficult. Based on this, in the present article, the two elements of “voice of the narrator” and “focalization” in the narrative text of Shazdeh Ihtejab are discussed in order to present the artistic use of the two elements in the narrative text of Shazdeh Ihtejab.

---

Based on the theory of reflection in the sociology of art, literature in its broadest sense is a mirror of society that reflects the orientations, tastes and social currents and helps to dissect the society better than science and technology. In particular, among literary works, short stories and novels are more dependent on social life than other types of literature, and while being affected by changes in society, they themselves are the source of change and show the changes in societies. In this way, by recognizing the fluctuations and changes of the world inside the main characters of the stories, a path can be found to know the transformations and changes in the world outside them. The purpose of this study is to examine the image of the main character in Houshang Golshiri’s short stories. In this regard, an attempt was made to conduct a comparative content analysis of the works using the descriptive-analytical method and by extracting the characteristics of the main characters of Golshiri’s short stories in the 60s and 70s (Persian Calendar) and by identifying the main socio-political events and currents of the years following the victory of the Islamic Revolution. The results show that in his collection of stories Golshiri directly and indirectly presented a part of the mentalities and thoughts of intellectuals, artists and the middle class of his time and there is a close relationship between the spiritual, political, social and cultural characteristics of the main characters of each collection of stories with the prevailing socio-political situation of that period. This corresponds to the author’s political and social perception of the developments of the period because when the status of society changes, some of these characteristics also change.