Comparative Application of Lukács’ Concept of Class Consciousness in Houshang Golshiri’s “The Conquest of Moghan” and Herman Melville’s “The Story of Wall Street”

From philosophy and politics to literary criticism, György Lukács paved the ground for the notion of "class consciousness."In the realm of comprehending the idea of "consciousness," there are genuine and false genres, making it impossible to grasp it precisely. However, the literature gives a more accurate knowledge of this category by offering objective instances based on lived experience. To explain this subject, two tales were chosen. In these stories, one may find indications of class consciousness in the lives of the main characters in a metaphorical sense. The stories analyzed in this paper are two revolutionary stories in which the main characters clearly show the emergence of class consciousness with numerous components. The research approach is formal and comparative, with a dialectical conceptual framework. The findings demonstrate that "Barat" in the Moghan Conquest and "Bartleby" in "A Wall Street Story" are not only socially engaged individuals, but also participate in the process of becoming conscious. The protagonist of Golshiri's story is in the process of both generating and destroying consciousness, whereas Melville's topic is in the process of establishing a unique consciousness from a fresh perspective. "Barat" views the birth of awareness as a political revolution, but this consciousness stays in the unproductive realm, which "Bartleby" views as the basis for the relations of capitalist production. The similarity between the two lies in the belief that the consciousness of the individual extends to the collective.