A fever dream or opium-induced hallucination of a book. The Blind Owl was a moody, dark, sinister, and slightly surrealist reading experience resembling literature of the Decadent movement; however, this is not like Huysman's Against Nature. Our narrator does not wallow and whine in a setting of luxury, culture, and opulence. The "othering" and mocking of others, referred to as the "rabble" in the novella, is not borne from any superior artistic tastes or literary intelligence on behalf of the narrator. No, his decadence is in his indulgent self-pity and navel gazing, exemplified by his decision to live rather in his inner world, his melancholy daydreams and reflections, than the reality inhabited by the busy and practical masses. He revels in his malaise. In fact, it almost reads narcissistic. The narrator has resigned himself to a view that there is an inevitability and predestined outcome for his life, which gives him the luxury of being weak in will power and without true stress, guilt, or conscientiousness.

The world built in the novella feels blurry at the edges, which creates a reading experience that feels like trying to run in water or finding your way in a dense and disorienting fog. There are many moments of deja vu and a pervasive feeling of isolation despite the proximity of the hustling and bustling "rabble" outside his door. There may be a whole world at the narrator's peripheral but it doesn’t exist for him. The only thing he chooses to recognize the existence of are his mental decline and his desire for a woman who does not submit herself to his lust. He allows this obsession to make him mentally and physically ill, and even seems to enjoy the destructive effects of it, similar to people who enjoy watching themselves cry in the mirror.

The obsession the narrator has for the unnamed woman, who he almost affectionately refers to as "the whore", is almost a perversion of the Madonna-whore complex. Her promiscuousness (with everyone but him) lends her a saintliness. It is precisely because she is a whore that he desires and idolizes her. Hate and desire are one and the same for him as these are the only two things that can manage to induce any feeling in him. She has many lovers and seems to be fairly indiscriminate in selecting them while continuing to spurn him, essentially rendering the narrator symbolically impotent. Sadomasochism presents itself strongly in this dynamic.

Spoler alert! He is driven to an act of killing her in order to metaphorically consume and conquer that which has had such a cripping and arresting power over him. To destroy her was the closest act of shared climax he could ever achieve with "the whore". The Blind Owl was a dark, disorientating and psychologically twisted nightmare of a book.

screams this book is so fucked up
the repetition i find interesting because it would usually become annoying but here i found it added into a dream-like quality integral to the story