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Beckett, as a typical modern author, adopts a position between subjectivity and objectivity, and in the gap between these two, by focusing on the latter on one hand, represents an image of Lukacs's realistic view and on the other hand, by scrutinizing more precisely, offers a profile of the existentialist view. Beckett's presence itself in this gap inevitably entails a critical representation of both realms. His characters, in confrontation with modern subjectivization, seek refuge to the fragmented reified objectivity leading to desubjectivization, which is in line with Beckett's characters' anxiety and angst of thinking about their existential how-ness. Meanwhile, their denying the past is synonymous with negating Dasein's temporality features, and this ends in the dissolution of their most primary existential feature, projection. The concomitance of these features eventuates in the appearance of characters such as Vladimir and Estragon who evade thinking like a modern subject, that is, a kind of thinking which revolves around a transcendental signified.

Life Is Elsewhere is a reflective introspection into the life of a young poet and of his demanding mother. Kindera depicts the mother as a woman feeling unworthy of love who relishes the fantasy of being Jaromil's ethereal mother in order to escape from her actual bodily deprivation and resolve her psychological tensions. On the other hand, Jaromil's portrait as a young poet involves his consonant, in Lacan's terms, imaginary and symbolic identifications which lead him to an unending alienation in the context of a socialist system. Reading the novel in the light of Bakhtin's ideas on parody and its polyphonic nature illuminates Kundera's parodic treatment of motherhood, poetic, political and historical discourses, and especially his use of parody as a political means to oppose the domineering voice of totalitarianism. However, by giving parody an ontological status, Kundera considers it as the inevitable destiny of a human being who has forgotten his authentic "being" and ignored all his existential possibilities opened up to realization. Applying this notion to Kundera's relation to his characters, Jaromil and the middle-aged man, implies that these two characters are, in fact, the parody of the two stages of Kundera's own life and that of his generation's.

Angela Carter (1940-92) in her famous short story, The Bloody Chamber, depicts a protagonist whose identity seems to be a predetermined sign in a signifying loop from which she can make no escape. In the first part of our paper, we attempt to show how The protagonist's ensuing psychological tension is aggravated by the conflict which she feels between her ideal ego (as an innocent girl) and her ego-ideal (a rare talent for corruption) and which leads her to unrelenting introspection and interior dialogue with her existential states. Such interior dialogue provides the protagonist with an existential ground on which she empties all her life events of their presence by signifying (or verbalizing) them through Derridean Differance. Therefore, her interior dialogue results in non-identity in her subjectivization both in the realm of signs and of (social) events. Then, we focus on the protaganist's paradoxical urges spontaneously outflowed from within which, by resisting symbolization, provide her with the possibility of becoming what she thinks she has never been and allow for her moments of self-determination. Finally, we illustrate how such psychological odyssey takes shape in the Gothic setting which arouses, in Lacanian terminology, pre-symbolic tendencies and which involves the coincidence of Gothic horror with the horrors of social reality.

In his Discipline and Punish (1995), Foucault describes the plague-stricken city where authorities exercised surveillance to control the contagion of the disease. As Foucault states, the first precaution to take was the strict division of space which led to the isolation of dwellers; this spatial partitioning reinforced the notion of pervasive surveillance and paved the way for the modern disciplinary society of which Panopticon was an ideal architectural embodiment. In this paper, we try to show how a combination of the plague-ridden city's discipline diagrams and Panopticism make the whole scene of Auster's Ghosts. By focusing on the role of writing in power mechanisms depicted in the novel, we illustrate the power-knowledge relations which involve the characters in the process of subjectification and which construct the subject position of the author (Blue) who acts as the (in) visible eye of authority. Then, we argue that Blue's dilemma aggravates mainly because he identifies his individual life with his Foucauldian "author function".

Among the most prominent political novels of the twentieth century, Invitation to a Beheading is the acme of Nabokov's art in that it was embellished by the finest Nabokovian techniques, and was enriched by thought- provoking ideas. This study is aimed to offer a narratological reading of this novel in search of what its implied author has pictured as the meaning of genuine freedom intended by Nabokov. By analyzing the story and discourse levels of this narrative, we are going to discuss, first, the concepts of 'reality' and 'individuality' in Invitation to a Beheading as the pillars on which the author constructed the ultimate concept of freedom. After discussing the contribution of these two notions, in the last section of this article, dedicated to the questions of ideology and rhetoric, we place the ultimate concept of freedom in the period in which the novel was composed. We discuss how the final picture is in accordance with the peculiarities of the modern world that went through two World Wars and witnessed the outcome of totalitarian systems.

In this research, we have studied the population of street children in Khorram Abad in Iran, in 2015, with the emphasis on the role of economic and legal factors forcing children to work on the streets. The results of this research show that the issue of child labor is the consequence of both global and local matters. These children are the products of the urban society, poverty, and cultural, legal, and local factors. The research method is a survey, and the statistical population is the street children, aged between 7 to 18 living in Khorram Abad, in 2015. The sample population chosen randomly includes 242 people, and the required information was gathered using the questionnaire and interview technique. In Khorram Abad, Lorestan, economic crisis and parents' misdemeanor are the two main factors that force the children to fill their fathers' missing place by working in the streets. But, gender factors such as being a boy, and cultural factors such as belonging to a specific tribe are influential in the howness of this phenomenon. In this article, we have attempted to use native sources for a better understanding of the local situation of the phenomenon, and have proposed a few solutions to alter the current situation.