Stream of Consciousness

When analyzing Naguib Mahfouz’s novel The Thief and the Dogs one’s attention is immediately brought to the use of Italicized text to demonstrate the inner thoughts of the main character Said Mahran. While easily accepted by an audience of a western upbringing this style was very uncommon in eastern societies and non-present in most Arabic writing. The aptly named streamed named stream of consciousness is a literary style in which the author follows a characters inner thoughts as events occur.

Specifically, stream of consciousness is a style of narration which aims to create a conscious flow of the character’s mental process. This creates a great amount of depth especially in regards to physical responses, when Said experiences key events in the novel Mahfouz deepens the true nature of the event by adding a layer of physical and emotional responses which only one thinks within their mind. When Said initially encounters the rejection by his daughter he is immediately stricken with grief and sorrow, however this is only displayed through his interior monologue of his sadness. Done in the perspective of Said the description feels personal almost as if he is recounting the tragic tale to you, speaking about how deeply the pain felt and how he just barely kept himself together. This is heavily contrasted by the typical narration style dawned by Mahfouz throughout the novel one of third person primarily, and within the third person we view the sequence of events from the perspective of someone within the room, we are almost watching the events play out on a movie screen. The contrast is not accidentally as Mahfouz initially incorporates this duality in the novel in order to better express the duality of the main character Said, whom constantly faces internal conflicts that often drive the plot forward and drive him to take action.

This style of writing is fantastic to truly give the audience a feeling for not only the character but for the tale through their eyes. Little do audiences get the chance to truly understand how a character within a novel feel, but through the use of this style, this is one of the primary reasons for Mahfouz implementation. The obvious move towards modernism not only in culture but in expression, and similar to the modernism movement in western culture writers of Egypt began to use different conventions or completely new ones to help break away from the mold. Mahfouz expertly imploded different styles which were unique to Egypt at the time to help manufacture a fantastic crime novel.

Now many probably wonder why Crime Novel, well during the inception of the novel Mahfouz was within a country of change and massive change at that. The entire government was restructured and the former king was exiled and with such drastic change comes great errors and issues. To help aid in the transition to a more modern Egypt the new government had turned in on itself as disagreement was seen as tertiary, this lack of loyalty and nervousness sparked great conflict within the government and as Mahfouz was privy to this experience he became mortally afraid of consequences to any actions he took especially one of criticism towards the changes, which in some way this novel was. Mahfouz tread a fine line but managed to come out ahead with the novel being widely accepted and greatly philosophized over, as well as many within the government deeply appreciating the style and content of the novel. Fortunately many didn’t know the true purpose of Mahfouz’s novel and because of this he was able to avoid any harsh scrutiny or ramifications, this didn’t stop him however for initially using aliases and a newspaper to release the novel chapter by chapter.