The present article critiques the deconstructionist approach in the process of analyzing Sadegh Hedayat's short story "The Stray Dog." The main objective is to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach when confronted with a classical realist story that has a transparent narrative structure and an explicit moral weight. First, the foundations of post-structuralism and Jacques Derrida's concept of deconstruction—including the denial of ultimate meaning, the endless deferral of signifiers, and the rejection of any grand narrative—are elucidated. The research method is descriptive-analytical, and relying on key concepts of deconstruction (différance, deferral, the denial of presence), the applicability of this approach to the reading of the aforementioned story is evaluated. The findings indicate that the extreme relativism arising from the principle of différance and the deferral of meaning prevents deconstruction from making any moral judgment regarding suffering, violence, and injustice. Furthermore, the methodological ambiguity and the lack of a clear procedure render this approach practically inapplicable when confronting a classical realist text, leading it into self-exceptionalism (a self-referential paradox). On the other hand, the exclusive focus on the text and the play of signifiers leaves deconstruction unable to analyze the material context of power and dominant ideology. Due to its extreme relativism, methodological opacity, and entanglement in a self-referential paradox, deconstruction lacks the necessary efficacy for analyzing stories with ethical and objective components. Applying it to such texts not only fails to contribute to the