Postmodern Ontology in Green Tavern and Night Journey by Abu Torab Khosravi Based on Brian McHill’s Ontological Theory

Brian McHale's theory of postmodern ontology has been applied to two short stories by Abu Torab Khosravi from his collection For McHale, postmodern ontology is essential because it facilitates the shift in narrative from modernism to postmodernism. This study aims to investigate the presence of postmodern ontology in the selected stories by Abu Torab Khosravi. Based on McHale's theory, postmodern works predominantly explore the ontological and epistemological dimensions of cognitive existence. Postmodernist ontology addresses the creation of multiple parallel worlds, characterized by pervasive ambiguity and uncertainty. The unity and certainty of the world are questioned, leading to uncertainty and pluralism; however, in modernism, the world is understood to be based on unity and certainty. This study aims to investigate the themes of uncertainty and plurality in Green Tavern and Night Journey, as two short stories by Abu Torab Khosravi. This research was conducted based on the qualitative and descriptive-analytical approach, with data collected through library research and document analysis. Employing content analysis, the findings indicate that postmodernist ontology is the dominant element in the selected works, where multiple parallel worlds are created. These works are considered postmodern because ontology holds a more prominent position than epistemology.
Introduction:
The present study examines Brian McHale’s theories in two short stories—The Green Tavern and Night Journey—from the collection Haviyeh by the contemporary author Abu Torab Khosravi. The aims are to familiarize the reader with McHale’s ideas and with postmodernist features—especially the ontological dominant (the content-level focus on being and worlds)—to assess the extent of Khosravi’s success in deploying this ontological dominance in the two stories, and to reach a deeper understanding of Khosravi’s style and the art of his storytelling. The major question of this research addresses the techniques and devices used by Khosravi on the ontological structure of these two short stories?
Methodology:
The research employs a qualitative, descriptive-analytical method. Data were collected through library research and document analysis, and the findings were interpreted using content analysis. For McHale, the most important feature of postmodernism is the “ontological dominant.” He identifies the primary distinction between modernism and postmodernism within the philosophical domains of epistemology and ontology. According to him, other characteristics are organized around—and derive their meaning from—this content-focused axis. McHale regards postmodernism as a continuation of modernism, identifying the principal difference between them in the types of questions they pose: modernist questions are epistemological, while postmodernist questions are ontological. Epistemological questions concern knowledge of the self and the surrounding world; by contrast, postmodernism addresses the existence of multiple worlds. Under the ontological paradigm, multiple and parallel worlds coexist within the narrative. In postmodern stories characterized by an ontological dominance, nested and heterogeneous worlds become interwoven, forbidden boundaries blur, being and non-being intermingle, and past and future appear simultaneously.
Results and Discussion:
In the short story The Green Tavern, the narrator visits a cemetery, where Mr. Karbaschi—deceased for many years—speaks to him in the guise of a living person. They walk together to the tavern of the world of the dead. A close reading of the story reveals that we are not confronted with a single, unified world but with two distinct realms: the world of the living and the world of the dead. The interpenetration of these worlds transforms a singular world into a plural one. Being and non-being have merged completely that, upon finishing the story, the reader gazes in wonder at these proliferating worlds and asks: In which world do we live? What kind of world is this, where the living so readily cross the boundary between being and non-being, while the dead rise, clothe themselves, and—assuming the appearance of the living—converse with them? In this way, ontological questions are posed to the reader.
The ontological content in “Night Journey” is equally powerful. Although Mr. Danayan’s journey lasts only a few days, when he returns home, he is confronted with the future: his wife has aged, and the child they had been expecting has disappeared from possibility. When he rings the doorbell, his older self opens the door to his younger self. Youth and old age collide. Upon entering the house, the young and old Danayan now coexist simultaneously and in parallel within the same domestic space, without recognizing one another. The young Danayan merely feels a kinship with the older man, even as the latter’s presence unsettles him. Thus, past and future interweave. From the moment the young Danayan rings the bell and the old man opens the door until the end of the story, the worlds of past and future—youth and age—unfold side by side. During their brief co-presence in the house, the two exist, in a sense, in tension with each other.
In both stories, forbidden boundaries are thoroughly blurred—albeit in different ways. In The Green Tavern, the boundary between being and non-being is erased; in Night Journey, it is the boundary between past and future. Because much of both narratives unfolds across multiple parallel worlds, the ontological dimension of each story is foregrounded, and the ontological dominance is very strong in both. The findings indicate that the ontological dimension is the predominant element in Khosravi’s work. The two stories analyzed, by applying McHale’s theory of the ontological dominant and by creating parallel worlds, generate a plurality of worlds, raise ontological questions, and intensify the stories’ ontological focus.
Conclusion:
In these two stories, Khosravi creates parallel worlds that, in Green Tavern, juxtapose the realms of the living and the dead, and in Night Journey, the realms of the past and the future. This parallelism creates a multiplicity of worlds and highlights ontological questioning. In both narratives, the author skillfully positions the protagonist between two worlds and, at times—as in Green Tavern—portrays characters oscillating between them. The narrator of Green Tavern begins in a unitary world. Upon seeing a cat from the world of the dead, he enters a plural world. When the cat disappears, he returns to the unitary world. Upon seeing Karbaschi, he once again reenters the plural world. Similarly, in Night Journey, Danayan inhabits a single world until the moment he rings the bell; the opening of the door ushers in multiplicity, placing past and future in parallel within the narrative. The young and old Danayan remain simultaneous and parallel until the final lines. Khosravi is among the authors who so thoroughly integrate postmodernist elements into the narrative fabric that separating them from the story seems impossible. The techniques and devices he employs in these two stories all serve to highlight the stories’ ontological dimension. Wherever the ontological dimension is foregrounded, the narrative exhibits an ontological dominance. In both The Green Tavern and Night Journey, Khosravi achieves postmodern indeterminacy by creating parallel worlds. The overall conclusion is that by establishing parallel and interpenetrating worlds—the living and the dead, as well as the past and the future—Khosravi destabilizes the descriptive reality of these two short stories and sharply foregrounds their ontological structure.