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The Symphony of the Dead (1989) is the most famous work of Abbas Maroufi and one of the most prominent novels of the sixties. The existence of some elements of modernity, including the narrative of the stream of consciousness, the multiple and sometimes innovative points of view, the circularity of the narrative, and the benefit of a symphonic structure, has made it a modern novel.   Some of these elements have made a correct and clear understanding of the themes belying the novel very difficult. In addition, the fragmentary structure and plurality of points of view make the text from a reader's perspective incoherent and discontinuous. The present article, drawing upon the Conceptual Structure Theory, aims to explore metaphorical systems dominant in the text and reveal the most prominent themes of the novel which have contributed to the subtlity of the text making it a unified coherent whole. To do so, the instances of the three types of metaphor used within the text, that is, 'directional', 'ontological', and 'structural' metaphors each of which is used to develop a central theme within the text are studied.
Results indicated that based on these three types of metaphor, the writer expresses his own worldview and mentality through the three main mappings, that is, "power is above/weakness is below", "man is animal", and "life is war". Such image schemas reflect the writer's own dominant system of thought which is imperceptibly spread throughout the text bringing about a text with a coherent content.

Keywords: conceptual metaphor, theme, text coherence, symphony of the dead

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