Bill Brown’s thing theory examines how thingness becomes manifest and the material presence of objects is foregrounded when habitual human–object relations undergo disruption or transformation. Using this theory and a descriptive-analytical, comparative approach, this study examines transformations in the material network of domestic space in Bijan Najdi’s “My Button Eyes” and Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time.” It asks how these transformations alter human–thing relations and how objects’ material properties contribute to the formation of harm. Findings show that in Najdi’s story, the violence of war disrupts domestic space and severs the caring relationship between the doll and Fati, exposing the doll to environmental forces and revealing its immobility, permeability, and material vulnerability. This condition is termed the “damaged thing.” In Gordimer’s story, fear and racial segregation under apartheid lead to the gradual expansion of security measures, while the razor-wire fence contributes to the child’s entrapment and injury without technical malfunction. The fence thus assumes the condition of an “injurious thing,” and the conflict between the consequences of its technical operation and the protective purpose for which it was installed is termed the “inversion of protective telos.” Comparative analysis shows that transformations in relations among humans, things, and environments foreground materiality in two ways: in one, traces of harm are inscribed in the doll’s materiality; in the other, the fence’s material properties contribute to bodily harm. Accordingly, things in these narratives are not merely bearers of symbolic and social meanings; their material properties also shape events and meaning.