Thieves and the Dogs Passage Analysis

The Passage:

The servant came in pushing a trolley laden with a bottle, two glasses, a pretty little violet-colored ice bucket, a dish of apples arranged in a pyramid, plates with hors d’oeuvres, and a silver water jug. 

Rauf gestured to the servant to withdraw, filled two glasses himself and offered one to Said, raising the other: “To freedom.” While Said emptied his glass in one gulp, Rauf took a sip then said, “And how is your daughter? Oh, I forgot to ask you—why did you spend the night at Sheikh Ali’s?”

He doesn’t know what happened, thought Said, but he still remembers my daughter. And he gave Rauf a cold-blooded account of his misfortunes.

 “So yesterday I paid a visit to al-Sayrafi lane,” he concluded. “There I found a detective waiting for me, as I’d expected, and my daughter disowned me and screamed in my face.” He helped himself to another whisky.

“This is a sad story. But your daughter isn’t to blame. She can’t remember you now.

Later on she’ll grow to know and love you.”

“I have no faith left in all her sex.”

“That’s how you feel now. But tomorrow, who knows how you’ll feel? You’ll change your opinion of your own accord. That’s the way of the world.”

The telephone rang. Rauf rose, picked up the receiver and listened for a moment. His face began to beam and he carried the telephone outside to the verandah, while Said’s sharp eyes registered everything. It must be a woman. A smile like that, strolling into the dark, could only mean a woman. He wondered if Ilwan was still unmarried. Though they sat there cozily drinking and chatting, Said now sensed that this meeting would be exceedingly difficult to repeat. The feeling was unaccountable, like the whispered premonition of some still undiagnosed cancerous growth, but he trusted it, relying on instinct. A resident now in one of those streets that Said had only visited as a burglar, after all, this man may have felt obliged to welcome him, having actually changed so much that only a shadow of the old self remained.” 

The Analysis:

With the introduction of such a statement “The servant came in pushing a trolley laden with a bottle, two glasses, a pretty little violet-colored ice bucket, a dish of apples arranged in a pyramid, plates with hors d’oeuvres, and a silver water jug". Naguib, through the use of internal monologue, is able to successfully convey the hatred and distrust within the protagonist Said. This is implied as Naguib portrays the inner thoughts of the protagonist Said with great detail towards the valuable things that Rauf owns. This detail is symbolic (and perhaps foreshadowing) of Said's true-self (being a thief), mainly because of how well these objects were described within Said's self-consciousness. As for symbolism it demonstrates the contrast in social classes between Said and Raud, and how Said aspires to become like Rauf, and how highly valued Rauf is in Egyptian society.  

After that Rauf's butler has served them with wine, Rauf says "To freedom". This line demonstrates the different perception of life varying between both characters. For Said, he feels that life has turned against him. After losing the last four years of his life, losing his daughter and his wife committing audeltry with his betraying friend. While on the other hand, Rauf, during the four years that Said spent in prison, has managed to crawl his way up to the upper-class, hence viewing the world he lives is as a world that is filled with freedom.

Moving along the lines in the passage, Said mentions his daughter disowning him the day he came out of jail, after four years of imagining his daughters smile. Rauf then starts to comfort him by saying "But your daughter isn’t to blame. She can’t remember you now. Later on she’ll grow to know and love you". This is ironic because Rauf used to be Saids mentor, as time passed by (relates to "grow to know you") they have become detached and each with their own perception of life.

 Said then says, “I have no faith left in all her sex". The reason behind him not having faith is due to his wife committing adultery, then having a divorce while he is in prison and marrying his "once-was" friend. This further portrays how the whole situation deeply impacted his inner views towards women as a whole, contributing to his character being further developed in the text.

Thieves and the Dogs Narrative Structure

Stream of consciousness is a form of interior monologue which depicts the thoughts and emotions of characters in a text. The stream of consciousness technique was regularly grounded in innumerable western texts. Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arab author to utilize this technique in his 1961 novel "The Thieves and the Dogs". Stream of consciousness dominates the entire novel and plays an imperative role in the unfolding of the plot and the characterization of the protagonist Said.

Through the use of the stream of consciousness technique, Naguib was able to create the illusion that the readers are aware of the emotions and thoughts within the character's mind before the character transitions these thoughts into any rational form or shape. In "The Thieves and the Dogs",  Naguib alternates between third person narration and Said's interior monologue  in order to provide the readers with a closer connection with the protagonist (Said) than if it were solely third person.

Chapter 1 is momentous in the unfolding of the plot. Naguib Mafouz uses direct and indirect narration as well as soliloquy in order to set the tone for the entire novel. Also, this type of narration establishes the direction of the novel and provides a form of foreshadowing. One instance of this can be seen

 "Nabbawiyya. Ilish. Your two names merge in my mind. For years you will have been thinking about this day, never imagining, all the while, that the gates would ever actually open. You’ll be watching now, but I won’t fall into the trap. At the right moment, instead, I’ll strike like Fate." 

 Through the implementation of this soliloquy, Naguib was able to successfully portray Said's internal struggles and his lust for revenge towards his ex wife and his former friend.

The advantages of using this technique include the fact that through the constant transition between third person and internal monologue the readers are able to witness both aspects of the story (the protagonist's thoughts and reality), Also, the narration allows for further characterization of the protagonist, for instance we as the audience can witness Said's two-faced personality through what is occurring in reality (conversation between him and his guests) and what is happening internally in his thoughts. One disadvantage is that only one character's thoughts are portrayed which negates other characters depiction of things, which would have otherwise potentially been be completely different,

Value of Literature in Translation

Russian poet Boris Pasternak once described literature to be  "the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying ordinary words something extraordinary" There are best-selling novels created by authors from all over with different ethnicities, backgrounds, and cultures. The fact that we were able to read some of these novels as a result of translation is truly a gift.  However the chief issue with translating Literature is the presence of language barriers which restricts our appreciation and understanding of these translated works.

The main advantage that translated literature brings to the table, is that we (The world) as a multi-cultural society are able to read each other's works and gain the ability to better understand the world we live in through gaining appreciation of other people's cultures and values.It's a wonder how words that once meant gibberish to us are now world-renowned texts translated into our very own languages that we are now able to read and gain life-lessons from. One example of such a text is "O Alquimista' written by Portuguese author Paulo Coelho. The book sold over 65 million copies world-wide and was translated to 67 languages.

One issue with translation is that each one of us was brought up differently and perceive different things through our unique life-experiences and then attempt to relate them to literature and other sources of knowledge. If one translator perceives something differently, then the text is altered, which could ruin the entire message behind the original text. A Chinese author "Feng" translated a collection of poems and out of the 326 verses, only three were criticized as the meaning of the official poems was slightly altered. This was because Feng perceived the poems in a more sexual form than what the author meant, thus he received countless amounts of criticism and death threats .

With that being said, i believe that despite the potential of a loss of meaning through translation, the fact that we are now able to comprehend literature from other cultures is intriguing. All credit solely goes to translation. All in all, some say that you would never understand the true meaning of life without reading certain texts. This statement alone, puts great emphasis on the importance of literature and why language barriers should not be a major issue.