[ENGLISH] The Thief and the Dogs - Stream of Consciousness Narration

Naguib Mahfouz has used the Stream of Consciousness narration throughout the novel. The use of this technique throughout the novel has given us, the readers, an insight into the thought process that Naguib Mahfouz was going through during President Gamal Abdel Nasser's reign in Egypt as Mahfouz's thoughts on the Egyptian Revolution has been heavily transferred to the novel. The stream of consciousness narration helps the readers to view the story in a new perspective.

The stream of consciousness narration is a type of narration that attempts to present a character's variety of thoughts which passes through their minds as the story unfolds. It is usually presented as an internal monologue within a character's mind. This type of narration can also help with the characterisation of various characters within the story yet it seems that descriptions are slanted towards the character's thoughts on the situation. This type of narration was defined by psychologist William James and was later made popular by authors Virginia Woolf with her work "To the Lighthouse" and James Joyce with his work "Finnegan's Wake" to name a few. Breaking down the different conventions of this type of narration, we can see that there are two main aspects firstly being independent of the awareness of time and place and secondly being solely dependent on interior monologue which amplifies the thoughts and feelings a particular character has in regards to the whole plot and the character's situation in the story. This new way of presenting literature was brought up by the slowly rising movement of psychological realism at that time which can be defined as "the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivations". All of these aspects of the style of narration have, to an extent, appealed Mahfouz into applying it within his novel, the Thief and the Dogs.

It is evident that the stream of consciousness narration was first introduced into the Arab Literature world by Naguib Mahfouz himself. When Mahfouz uses the stream of consciousness narration in the novel, we can see that there is a shift in the way the story has been narrated. On the novel, we can see that Mahfouz abruptly interchanges the story's narration from first-person narration to third person narration where the first person narration presents Said Mahran's thoughts and feelings of the situation that is happening to him during his quite short lifetime.  We can see that Naguib Mahfouz is trying to present himself in the story as Said Mahran. The Stream of Consciousness narration opens up a platform for Mahfouz to truly express his thoughts and feelings of the Egyptian Revolution. Not long ago, Mahfouz had stated in an interview about the novel that Mahfouz wanted to write Said Mahran's story along with his own story and that he "subjected the main character, Sayyid Mahran, to all my confusion, my perplexities". This quote from his interview fully explains why Mahfouz wanted to use such conventions within his story. With this convention, Mahfouz expresses his realist thoughts in a unique way presenting more than one side of Said Mahran's story of his last few days of living. The stream of consciousness narration also presents us Said's thoughts on various characters such as Rauf Ilwan, Ilish Sidra and Nabawiyya to name a few. Said thoughts on them has been quite negative with the theme of revenge revolving around them. And as we can also see with Nur, his thoughts and feelings for her are very different. Such thoughts and feelings Said presented by Mahfouz cannot be expressed outside of the stream of consciousness narration.