Why does Mahfouz employ stream consciousness narration in the novel and to what effect?

The Thief and the Dogs is a novel written by Mahfouz in 1961. Taking into account that the story was written about a decade after the 1952 revolution it is pretty reasonable that this lapse of time gave Mahfouz an advantage, since he was able to examine and study how Nasser's raise to power affected the Egyptian society, and the social classes.

Once Nasser's consolidation of power in the Egyptian state occurs, the working class, or also known as the low class, becomes disappointed when the middle class takes advantage of the revolution to place itself on a higher position of society. This position brought power, in the form of privileges and wealth to the middle class individuals, which upset the working class. Before the revolution could happen, the middle class, more specifically the intelligentsia, was the class that spread out the Marxist values needed in the social mentality, that one day would overthrow the existing power. Once that power is overthrown, the Marxist mentality that believes in the equality of wealth among all social classes is no longer present in the middle class individuals' mentality. With the pass of the time, the middle class society establishes itself on a higher position of wealth, were Marxist values are completely abandoned. In turn, this upsets the working class, that collaborated and endorsed Marxist values that would finally bring justice, and equality to the Egyptian society, which in fact only brought a feeling of disappointment that can be compared to getting stabbed.

This situation is key when it comes to understanding the characterization of Mahfouz's main character in the Thief and the Dogs. Said, driven by the Marxist ideology of one of his teachers, decides to start stealing from the rich individuals of society, with the aim to redistribute the wealth among the ones that need it. Said represents himself as  robin Hood, whose ideology can be compacted in the statement, "the mean justify the ends". In the story Said gets caught stealing, and therefore goes to jail. The story starts right after Said is freed from his condemn, and is free from the jail. At this point the only thing that Said has in his mind is revenge towards his traitors.

The stream of consciousness narration is a main feature that should be considered Mahfouz's most important narration feature. When using Soliloquy, and interior monologue, Mahfouz transmits the idea that Said's thought and feelings do not represent only the life and situation of an individual, but the thoughts and feelings of an entire social class. For that matter, throughout the novel we recognize different parts of the story in which direct monologue, indirect monologue, and soliloquy are used in order to portray Said state of mind, and ideology clearly to the reader. In order to directly show how Said feels, the author uses direct monologue, as we can see in the very first page of the book when Said tells himself "Nabbawiya. Ilish, Your two names merge in my mind, For years you will have been thinking about this day". In this case Mahfouz wants to portray Said's rage, and bitterness, produced by the betrayal, therefore there is no better type of narrator that could explain the feeling through the use of similies, than Said himself.

On the other hand taking into the account that the story itself focuses on Said's feelings and thoughts regarding his situation, the plot itself is not given much importance, where we can see the use of a third person narrator through which the plot is advanced. A good example of this can be seen at the beginning of the chapter thirteen, where the third person narrator is used to simply advance the plot, therefore the narrator explains how Said carefully studies his moves to get to Tarzan's cafe, to obtain some information.


Finally, it is also crucial to differentiate the use of the indirect, and the direct monologue. All in all, throughout the story, we are able to observe how the focus is Said, when he reflects on his situation, on the things that could have happened if things were different, and therefore the use of direct, and soliloquy directly portrays Said's feelings. On the other hand, the indirect monologue is a biased type of narration in which the information given is directly related to the protagonist's mentality. This bias is just a literary tool, that makes us remember that that the story is all about one perspective, and one ideology, which is Said's ideology. The effect on the reader through the use use of this type of monologue just shows how Said's mentality is the center of the novel.