Death in the Prism of Existentialism: A Comparative Reading of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Sadeq Chubak's The Patient Stone

In this article, I compare William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Sadeq Chubak’s The Patient ýStone ýwith respect to the theme of death and from the perspective of Existentialism. I argue that ýdespite ýFaulkner’s influence on Chubak and similarities in their writings, the Iranian modernist novel ýpresents ýintellectual and aesthetic nuances catering to the domestic material circumstances of ýits ýcomposition. While As I Lay Dying offers a pro- Sartrean and nihilistic notion of mortality, the ýIranian ýnovel features a pro- Heideggerian and authenticating view of death. I use this comparison ýin order to ýtranscend the notion of modern Iranian literature as merely influenced by Western literary ýmodels.ý