The Passage to a Fantastic Analysis

Chapter Eight

Passage:

He dreamed that he was in jail, being whipped despite his good conduct, screaming shamelessly, but not offering any resistance. They gave him milk to drink. Suddenly he saw little Sana, lashing Rauf Ilwan with a whip at the bottom of a staircase. He heard the sound of a Koranic recitation and had a conviction that someone had died, but found himself, a wanted man, somehow involved in a car chase! The car he was driving was incapable of speed--there was something wrong with its engine--and he had to begin shooting in every direction, when all at once Rauf Ilwan appeared from the radio in the dashboard, grabbed his wrist before Said was able to kill him, and tightened his grip so mercilessly that he was able to snatch the revolver. At this point Said Mahran said to him: "Kill me, if you wish, but my daughter is innocent. It wasn't she who whipped you at the bottom of the staircase. It was her mother, Nabawiyya, at the instigation of Ilish Sidra."

Analysis

This extract from the novel comes when Said is staying at the Sheikh’s house after the attempted but failed murder of Ilish. This comes at a point where Said is pleased with himself for the (at this point) assumed success but in the presence of the Sheikh, he feels guilty.

It is clearly a dream sequence, but Mahfouz surprises the reader as most of the flashbacks that occur in the novel are very positive ones in order to juxtapose Said’s unhappiness in the present time, and most an audience is generally accustomed to a dream being positive. Instead, the author exposes us to a violent and panicking situation like the one we and Said are already in.

This could be done in order to comment on the paranoia that Said is feeling in his current situation and the paranoia of living under a dictatorship. This would be supported by the illogical sequence of events within the dream, where he first sees Sana lashing Rauf then all of a sudden is in a car chase, then Rauf is coming out of the dashboard. This is done to show the mindset of Said at this time, him clearly not being in a stable mental condition.

Said’s dream seems to be very concerned with the theme of justice, something prevalent throughout the entire novel. He finds himself in jail, perhaps a flashback to his four-year imprisonment, where he is being punished despite what he thinks to be “good conduct”. This could mimic the idea that he believes that he is being wrongly punished.

Despite this, Said clearly accepts his inevitable death as a tragic hero, provided that his own daughter who pushed him away is safe. He clearly has concern that his own reputation as a criminal must not tarnish hers, but rather the one who he believed was the cause of his further criminal activity, Nabawiyya.

Narration Admiration - Stream of Consciousness

The Thief and the Dogs is one of very few compulsory novels that in my 12 years of schooling, I have actually enjoyed. It could be the character of Said Mahran, or the interesting plot of a man who just longs for revenge regardless of its consequences, but I think that one of the aspects of this novel as opposed to others that made me enjoy it is the way in which it is told.

The reader follows Said in his journey, and I felt like I was one the journey with him. Naguib Mahfouz never lets the reader in on some new information that Said isn’t exposed to, and this goes towards building intense suspense.

The primary function of the stream of consciousness narrative mode seems to be its ability to get the audience into the head of the character. It allows the audience to observe how the mind of the protagonist operates to great effect, and forces the audience to see the world or a certain environment from someone else’s perspective as opposed to their own or a fairly neutral one. With this however, the author must be careful to avoid bias in creating an environment and not to paint anything in a false light, potentially offending people of a certain culture.

As The Thief and the Dogs progressed, I actually found myself rooting for Said despite his imminent flaws and almost antagonistic characteristics. I still wanted him to kill Rauf and Illish so that he could be at peace with himself before death, even after killing innocents. I think this is largely because of Mahfouz’s ability to make the reader care about this character through opening him up to the audience. Just reading the book, the reader can tell that there are no secrets being kept from them by Said, which makes for a more likeable character and allows the audience to fully embrace that character for all it is. In this way, Naguib Mahfouz was able to write a novel where the character drove the plot, and the story was not based on what happened to Said Mahran but what Said Mahran did and its consequences. Given this, being able to follow him throughout all this means the reader feels like they are at the very forefront of the plot and nothing too substantial is happening behind their back.

“Suddenly the blinding light went out, and the firing stopped; there was darkness again and quiet fell. He, too, wasn't firing any more. Slowly the silence was spreading, until all the world seemed gripped in some strange stupefaction. He wondered . . . ?” This moment in which Said was slipping into death was a powerful example of the stream of consciousness narration, especially given the use in conjunction with such imagery. The fact that at first he doesn’t even realise that he is dying (or perhaps even dead) makes the reader feel bad for him with all his naivety. Employing this technique at this point allows the reader to slip into death with him. It offers up a possibility for the process of dying and perhaps how Mahfouz believes death occurs, a process which no one has experienced and lived to tell the tale.

Both this novel and Things Fall Apart are written from a third-person perspective. The primary difference is that the narrator in this novel is selective with what is revealed to the audience, trying to keep the reader in the same position as the main character Said. On the other hand, Chinua Achebe makes use of an omniscient narrator in his novel. Both of these techniques are effective in their own ways, however I much prefer the way The Thief and the Dogs is written as I was truly invested in the plot when reading and it always felt very contained whereas Things Fall Apart felt all over the place as the narrator had so much to tell about so many different situations, added to by the need for exposition and explanation of key aspects of Igbo culture.

Value of Translation: I'll give ya 10 bucks for it

When I read something, whether it be a book, meme, or road sign, I place no consideration as to whether it is translated or not. In modern society, translation is just that easy, opening Google Translate, then copying and pasting being the minimum requirement.  All in all, translation is one of many developments that has made a more globalized society.

The reading I was exposed to yesterday made mention of something along the lines of, “Translated gives you what you don’t know you want.” As I described to my peers, I interpreted this as pertaining to the unawareness of us to other cultures, and by translating a text into our own tongue, we are given a sneak peek into the culture of the author and the culture of the environment they create in their literature through its setting and characters. Our previous unawareness is wiped away and instead our doors are opened to something different, something eye-opening, something beautiful.

On the other hand, that beauty can be lost if translation fails. Not only can a foreign reader fail to really capture the culture of the translated literature if this is done poorly, but even worse it can misrepresent a culture in a light which would disgrace its inhabitants. This can occur, and often does especially with the consistently negative content of the news, through translation of certain material and lack thereof of other material, painting a culture or nation in an unfavourable and perhaps biased manner. This is why translation should be done with care.

I look at it with a very simple perspective: translation increases the content available to me. Regardless of whether it provides a whole new view on life or anything of that gist, I believe that the more content that is out there and available, the better informed we can be.