The Endless End: Rereading the Vaght-e Taghsir by Mohammad Reza Kateb Based on Frank Kermode's Theory of Fiction

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

Abstract

This article analyzes Vaght-e Taghsir by Mohammadreza Kateb through Frank Kermode’s theory of fiction, focusing on his distinction between Chronos—linear, meaningless, repetitive time—and Kairos—moments of crisis and significance. Kermode argues that humans create coherent narratives to impose order on temporal chaos, granting life structure, meaning, and identity. In the contemporary world, particularly under conditions of perpetual violence and structural crisis, this meaning-making is severely undermined. Vaght-e Taghsir exemplifies such a world: characters and narratives remain suspended in fragmented states without clear beginnings or endings. Torture and suffering, stripped of transformative potential, become part of an endless, meaningless cycle. The government enforces a paradigm of permanent crisis, systematically erasing kairotic moments and trapping characters in interminable Chronos. This analysis reveals how the collapse of narrative and identity shapes both the novel’s structure and the existential reality of its characters. In this world, they fail to craft meaningful self-narratives, remaining imprisoned within cycles of suffering and futility. The depiction of Nesnas—hybrid, half-human figures—and identities in constant flux embodies an apocalyptic and postmodern paradigm with no hope for renewal or conclusion. Ultimately, Vaght-e Taghsir uses its dismantling of narrative and perpetual suspension of meaning to stage a radical critique of the contemporary human condition. By portraying a society in which meaning-making is impossible and crisis is normalized, Kateb’s novel transforms literature into a lens for examining and challenging the instability, fragmentation, and chronic crises of our age.

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Main Subjects

Literary Theory and Criticism

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 07 October 2025

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