نبذة مختصرة : The aim of this study is to examine metaphors and what may be perceived as motif-circuits in Stig Dagerman’s play Den dödsdömde (The Man Condemned to Death) and the two short stories “Den dödsdömde” (The Man Condemned to Death) and “Mannen från Milesia” (The Man from Milesia). My intention is to discuss a single theme and identity-marks that unites all three works, using Paul Ricoeur’s The Rule of Metaphor (La mêtaphore vive) as well as the “thematic critique” of Jean-Pierre Richard. What is metaphor for Ricoeur is for Richard themes (theme): an organizing principle, a sort of schedule around which a world is constituted. Hence, I find similarities between the motif-circuits, Ricoeur’s metaphor-theory and Richards’s themes. The motif-circuits: rain, light and darkness, (the) eyes and finally dream and reality, represent the analyses’ thread. The motif-circuits cut through the play and the two short stories. They form a single thematic continuity that binds together the story and move it forward. The motif-circuits have not only a privileged role in the texts, but above all a connection with Ricoeur’s metaphor-theory and Richard’s themes. My focus shall be affixed upon how the motif-circuits appear and the various charges they receive, depending on the context. The motif-circuits occur separately or in combination. Sometimes they exclude each other, relieve or replace each other. They differ from being abstract, perceptual, illusory or real (concrete). Moreover, the motif-circuits raises in the texts other interesting aspects, such as: consciousness and memory, time and space, life and death, subject and object (man’s role and women’s role), the hole forming a dynamic movement. Finally, one can say that the motif-circuits form a structure within which the action takes place.
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