Stream of Consciousness

Throughout his acclaimed novel The Thief and the Dogs, Naguib Mahfouz consistently utilizes the stream of consciousness technique. This technique is used to illustrate the various thoughts and feelings going through a particular character's mind. This provides a really detailed description on the character's thought process internally and able to contrast it with the way the character behaves externally and how he carries himself in real life. In the Thief and the Dogs, Mahfouz constantly reverts between first person and third person which helps in revealing to the readers how the protagonist of the novel Said feels about many different things throughout the story which helps us the readers with delving deeper into his emotions and beliefs. The novel is based on true events so it helps Mahfouz in integrating his own personal interpretation and beliefs on the revolution itself.

The stream of consciousness technique makes the novel follow a non linear plot which adds a realistic touch to the novel as a whole. When recalling memories, we are barely ever able to remember them sequentially and moment by moment in the right order, we remember them in a random order with moments being split up in our head randomly and coming back to us from time to time. Said barely recalls the memories in a linear order. This manner of non linear memories keeps the reader right there with Said since it is very realistic to remember things like how Said does and it does add a little bit of the element of surprise because it intrigues us in seeing Said put all the pieces together when recalling specific events. 

Mahfouz uses a lot of interior monologues in order for the readers to understand the struggles Said is going through. The use of the flashbacks and the technique help in shaping Said's perspective towards several other characters in the story. It can clearly be inferred from the technique and circumstances that Said does dislike Ilish and Nabawiyya. This helps demonstrate with  the narrative structure how Said is a rather emotional character despite being an expert thief. This adds to helping we the readers in being able to sympathize with Said and see him in a different light despite our initial reactions of not being able to sympathize with him due to his endeavours as a burglar. Throughout the story, the flashback involve interactions with many other characters which helps us understand the revolving people around Said's life and be able to see clearly on what sorrounds the main centerpiece of the novel.

There are several advantages in using the stream of consciousness technique. We can get a new viewpoint on many characters and see them in a different light, be able to relate to the flashbacks and the non linear nature of the stream technique and the context of the novel since it helps us learn more on the conditions of Egypt at thet very time.

Value of Studying Literature in Translation

When looking at books or plays that have been dubbed into another language, it may look like it was a piece of cake to translate something from one language to another...but actually it isn't.

Each language has it's own certain words, expressions, metaphors and meanings which are difficult to translate or gauge its true meaning in another language. There is a clear limitation as some words may be hard to translate so we are forced to subsitute in the closest possible meaning in order to make up for the lack of a visible match. Learning about a book which has been translated does help open doors into understanding different aspects on words and certain things that have a unique meaning.

A great part about studying a translated text is viewing something from a dofferent context and perspective such as viewing Thief and the Dogs from an Egyptian perspective and the revolution in Egypt helps shape our understanding better of the text and of the culture itself. A translated text helps see how the context can shape the writing ability of the author due to looking at the different circumstances the author was living in.

A link can be made to Lost in Translation where Feng Tang's work was translated into English and it appeared that 3 of the 326 poems were vulgar and inappropriate. This clearly shows the limitations on translating but also how understanding thse texts are shaped vis context due to the fact that many generations will view this in the weong light while others will not have a problem with the supposed vulgarity.