The Thief and the Dogs

Thief and the Dogs is a very fast paced novel, especially in the way it was written. Throughout the book there are abrupt shifts in narration between third person and the thoughts of the main character, Said. Being able to be so connected to a character, is another way of writing called Stream of Consciousness. It is a concept in writing that allows the reader to be so in tune with the character, that the reader is fully invested in the character’s life and how they view the world. This is a very prominent concept in the novel “The Thief and the Dogs” because of the direct link between Said and the reader.

The thing that I found most interesting about this novel was that although I felt a connection to Said, near the end I felt distanced. This, one could say was due to the Stream of Consciousness, because as the novel progresses it is hard not to question Said’s sanity. In addition, throughout the extension of the novel I started to move further and further away from Said, and became to be more aware of how his mind works, and if his fueled revenge and bottled up anger are really the right direction that Said should take. Overall, a very complex, yet interesting way of writing a novel, but I believe Mahfouz did it justice, giving a different outlook on a controversial topic.

When the reader is able to understand all the complexities of the narration and begin to question the mind of the protagonist, they begin to understand why the author chose to write the novel the way he did. In the novel a lot of Said’s internal struggle was drawn out of his external experiences. For instance: when his best friend and wife betray him, he is fueled with a lot of anger internally. The reason this idea of external implications to one’s internal struggle is important to the plot of the novel is because the same can be said about the author, and Said’s hardship could be debated as to being a parallel to Mahfouz’s reality.

Being able to grasp this concept it becomes clear in the reader’s mind as to why Mahfouz chose to write the novel the way that he did, and it was because of the post-revolutionary censorship that constricted Mahfouz’s writing. Therefore, Mahfouz had to find a way to explain the corruptness of his country without being caught through “The Thief and the Dogs”, but more explicitly through Said’s thoughts about the world he lived in. This in turn, I believe, is another reason why the author took the reader on a journey from viewing Said as a sane character to a more corrupt one. And the reason I, as a reader, began to feel distanced from the protagonist through the use of Stream of Consciousness; because it became clear to me that Mahfouz used Said and his fictional life in a way to depict his own cultural adversities that led to his own internal struggle that took place in his country at the time.

            Lastly, although Stream of Consciousness does have a lot of advantages and does play a crucial role in the development of the plot in this novel, there are limitations to the technique as well. When an author decides to use this technique it is very easy to continue the plot but keep the characters thoughts linear, which is incorrect because the beauty in writing with this technique is the realism of it. But humans do not think linearly, we think in a jumbled fashion, not one thought at a time. Thus, using stream of consciousness the author has to be aware of more than one thought at time to keep the complex realism of it, or else the main purpose of the technique is gone, and the reader begins to lose interest. Another obvious disadvantage in using this way of writing is that the readers are only subject to one character’s thoughts at all times and are not able to make their own judgements on situations themselves, but are forced to have the same opinion as that character because it is the only option available to them.  

            In conclusion, Mahfouz was able to create a controversial novel at a very difficult time, using an extremely complex style whilst still maintaining to keep the interest of the reader. 

Word Count: 733