Semiology of Decentring and Isolation of the Subject in Hedāyat's Stray Dog"

Decentring or isolation of the subject is one of the poststructural concepts which has affected the literary studies. In contrast to human subject who as an intellectual gives identity to the objects surrounding him, the poststructural subject has lost his position and is injured by isolation. Hedāyat’s “Stray Dog” narrates the loneliness of a dog and deserves to be analyzed according to the semiology of decentring. This article demonstrates that all the codes of the dog’s life signify his isolated situation. When the dog is lost, he finds a new subject position, but he not only is unable to make any code-system to communicate with his master, but fails to decode the routine codes. This makes him so decentered that he has no other end than death.