Narration

Over hundreds of years, authors have been challenging literature, and the ways one can present it. This would lead to many techniques and topics within the subject of literature, providing variety for all authors to use and adapt to their situations.

With one of these being the perspectives of different novels and texts, examples of this being, how the works of literature from eras such as the Victorian or Renaissance, are heavily affected by religion. While modern literature seems of pay more attention to the individual, which can be seen extremely easily in the new work we are studying, The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz, and comparing it to the last novel Studied, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

One may notice many differences between the two texts, even though they were written and published so close to each other, as to why, would be the purpose of the novel and the message the author may be attempting to present to their audiences. In the Thief and the Dogs, Mahfouz makes use of third person narration and stream of consciousness through the protagonist’s internal monologues, which is extremely important for Mahfouz to achieve the complexity of his work. In doing so, Mahfouz can explore the character of Said Mahran in greater detail. One example being found within the first chapter of the novel, the narrator switching between third person narration used for describing Said’s surroundings and stream of consciousness which allows us to understand Said’s as a person along with his life story.

 Third person narration is used when the author mentions that “once more he breathed the air of freedom” telling us that Said was finally out of prison and that “there was stifling dust in the air” which describes as mentioned Said’s surroundings. A switch to direct internal monologue can then be noticed, which signals the use of stream of consciousness, when Said starts thinking about “Nabawyiyya. Ilish. [Their] two names [merging] in [his] mind”. Furthermore, this direct monologue is combined with indirect monologue where the author describes his other thoughts, Said thinking whether luck will “give him some decent place to live, where such love could be equally shared”. Here Said’s thoughts seem to be overlapping, half of him thinking about his home and half thinking about revenge on his enemies. This highlights the author’s purpose of presenting Said as confused which is important since we know that the purpose of the author was to present his own confusion relating to the changing Egyptian society after the revolution through the character of Said. 

It is possible to see that the author’s use of stream of consciousness throughout the novel, and just how useful it can be in terms of portraying in detail the elements of the protagonist’s life, including his past and present decisions. 

However, with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe seems to be writing a novel that shares elements of modern literature and literature from the older areas of literature. The reason is that the novel is revolving around the life of one character, Okonkwo, yet it seems that he is sometimes only a tool used by Achebe for portraying more important elements in the novel such as the Igbo culture, including their religion, values and beliefs and therefore the focus not being predominantly one individual’s experience. From the point of view of narration, Things Fall Apart is written using third person narration, having an omniscient narrator. This eliminates any suspicion of the events being presented in a biased manner, whereas this question could always be asked when talking about stream of consciousness in Said’s case. Within a novel, characterization plays an important role as it helps us understand not only the characters but the story as a whole. While looking at the description of characters in both novels we can distinguish both similarities and differences that arise as a result of the different techniques of narration used, this again highlighting the difference between a more modern novel and one that is sharing characteristics of the novels from the Victorian era.  If in The Thief and the Dogs we could see that characterization was made mostly through character’s actions along with Said’s description of characters within his monologues, in Things Fall Apart the characterizations are mostly realized by the narrator. Yet, a similarity can be found as well here because the characterization in Things Fall Apart can also be made by using character’s actions.