انور سجاد کے افسانوں میں اساطیری عناصر: ایک تنقیدی مطالعہ

Mythical Elements in the Short Stories of Anwar Sajjad: A Critical Study

Abstract

Anwar Sajjad holds a distinctive and prominent position in Urdu fiction. The use of mythic elements in Anwar Sajjad’s fictional style is found to be deeply meaningful, and his creative world can be understood through Lévi-Strauss’s concept of mythic binaries. In his stories, myth is not merely a relic of tradition or ancient narrative; rather, it becomes a symbolic system for expressing the existential crisis of modern man, inner fragmentation, social oppression, and the struggle for identity. His dream-like narratives transcend literal reality and operate primarily at the level of symbols, embodying fundamental oppositions such as freedom and confinement, light and darkness, life and death, consciousness and the unconscious, and good and evil. This study demonstrates that the formation and interaction of these binaries reflect the same intellectual principles that Lévi-Strauss identifies in the structure of myth namely, the human mind’s method of making sense of the world. Consequently, Anwar Sajjad’s stories move beyond mere storytelling and emerge as a mythic mirror of modern humanity’s psychological, cultural, and ethical dilemmas, establishing a distinctive model for the creative and philosophical use of myth in Urdu fiction.