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The River’s End is a fictional work with a dream-like structure. In this article we analyze this story and its meaning-making structure through a Freudian approach. This reading includes two layers: (1) the overt or surface structure of the story; (2) the covert or deep structure of the story. In the overt layer, it is demonstrated that the story has a conceptual structure and its events are narrated in a disorganized plot in which the causality and time sequence are distorted. In the covert layer, we have distinguished between metaphoric and hidden plot. In the metaphorical plot, the symbols of the narrative of The River’s End have been identified and two symbols of Zāyandeh-Rood and Gāvkhuni as two prevalent feminine symbols which are related to the return to the womb are analyzed. Many of the characters then based on their relationship to these two symbols are psychoanalyzed. In the hidden plot the relationship between the narrator with the pleasure principle and death principle are analyzed to unravel the unending suspension of the narrator in the procedures of fate, repetition, and movement toward death is defined.

Keywords: dream, river, death instinct and female, Psychoanalytical criticism, The River’s End

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