The current thesis attempts to present a comparative reading of Saul Bellow’s Herzog and Reza Ghasemi’s The Nocturnal Symphony of Lumbers’ Orchestra. The fundamental aim of this thesis is to trace Žižekian concepts of the parallax, the tickling object, and the ticklish subject in these two novels. Herzog, one of Bellow’s awarded novels, contains a host of unsent letters providing illustration of Moses Herzog’s psychological status. Congruently in The Nocturnal Symphony of Lumbers’ Orchestra, Reza Ghasemi investigates the protagonist’s psychological status, Yadollah. Žižekian theory of the subject provides proper theoretical framework in reading these American and Persian novels. The works of Slavoj Žižek conducted disputatious re-articulation of Subject/Object, the Displacement of an Objet Petit a (Object of Desire) with Object-Cause of Desire, and Parallax. Žižek re-articulated Lacanian concepts, but, like Hegel, he places emphasis on one-to-one relation between subject and object. This thesis sheds light upon the psychological status of Moses and Yadollah; a comparative study of protagonists’ subjectivity in both novels. Herzog’s most significant actions take place in the mind of the subject. Moses’ second wife, Madeleine, is often described as the source of Moses’ interior struggle as she abandons Moses to be lover of Valentine Gersbach, Moses’ best friend. In Reza Ghasemi’s novel, actions are narrated through Yadollah’s mind. Yadollah is left behind by his lover, Raana on one hand, and on the other hand, the fact that Yadollah has immigrated delineates his inner subjectivity. Moses’ and Yadollah’s interior struggle to find truth appears to delineate the real essence of the subjects.
