TATD Passage Analysis Chapter 1-4

The passage depicted below comes from Chapter 4 in the thief and the dogs by Naguib Mahfouz where Said has met with Rauf in his house and now is thinking to himself.

"So this is the real Rauf Ilwan, the naked reality - a partial corpse not even decently underground. The other Rauf Ilwan has gone, disappeared, like yesterday, like the first day in the history of man - like Nabawiyya's love or Ilish's loyalty I must not be deceived by appearances. His kind words are cunning, his smiles no more than a curl of the lips, his generosity a defensive flick of the fingers, and only a sense of guilt moved him to let me cross the threshold of his house. You made me and now you reject me: Your ideas create their embodiment in my person and then you simply change them, leaving me lost - rootless, worthless, without hope - a betrayal so vile that if the whole Muqattam hill toppled over and buried it, I still would not be satisfied. 
I wonder if you ever admit, even to yourself, that you betrayed me. Maybe you've deceicved yourself as much as you try to deceive others. Hasn't your conscience bothered you even in the dark? I wish I could penetrate your soul as easily as I've penetrated your house, that house of mirrors and objects d'art, but I suppose I'd find nothing but betrayal there: Nabawiyya disguised as Rauf, Rauf disguised as Nabawiyya, or Ilish Sidra in place of both - and betrayal would cry out to me that it was the lowest crime on earth. Their eyes behind my back must have traded anxious looks throbbing with lust, which carried them in a current crawling like death, like a cat creeping on its belly toward a bewildered sparrow. When their chance came, the last remnants of decency and indecision disappeared, so that in a corner of the lane, even in my own house, Ilish Sidra finally said, "I'll tell the police. We'll get rid of him," and the child's mother was silent - the tongue that so often and so profusely told me, "I love you, the best man in the world," was silent. And I found myself surrounded by police in Al-Sayrafi Lane - though until then demons themselves with all their wiles hand failed to trap me - their kicks and punches raining down on me. 
You're just the same, Rauf - I don't know which of you is the most treacherous - except that your guilt is greater because of your intelligence and the past association between us: You pushed me into jail, while you leapt free, into that palace of lights and mirrors. You've forgotten your wise sayings about palaces and hovels, haven't you? I will never forget. 


Analysis

After the introduction in Chapter 3 to Rauf Ilwan and we learn about the past relationship between Said and Rauf, but we also learn that Rauf has changed from his old rebellious personality into the thing that he and Said despised. the rich which the reader understands through Said's words. This passage is a stream of consciousness in Said's mind after the meeting with Rauf where he finds Rauf treacherous due his change in personality as well as ideology which to Said is worthless, rootless and without hope. In this passage the reader can see how enraged Said is because of all the people that have betrayed him. Especially Rauf where he was characterized as Said's mentor and a person whom Said was very fond of but Said in his mind believes that Rauf was the one who send him to prison with all the ideologies he taught him while Rauf swindled away to the rich society. In this passage Said is characterized as vengeful as well as hurt, because while he is enraged by the fact that not only Ilish and Nabawiyya betrayed him, now his mentor Rauf has basically not want anything to do with Said, the same person who taught Said everything. To the reader this state of Said makes them sympathetic of Said because not only he lost his child and wife but now his old friend has betrayed him leaving him truly alone against the world. But the sympathy part fades when Said states that he will never forget, meaning that he will raise hell or high water to repay the deeds that were acted upon him by the dogs that betrayed him. This is the beginning of his hubris against Rauf where he plans to get back at the people who betrayed him, especially Rauf whom in Said's mind is the most important person to get back at due to his past association with Said.

TATD Narrative Style Analysis

Naguib Mahfouz utilizes the stream of consciousness to provide a foundation for the events in Said's life after prison. It means a literary style in which a character's thoughts, feelings, and reactions are depicted in a continuous flow uninterrupted by objective description or conventional dialogue. Furthermore through Said's consciousness we are given glimpses of his past, most of which comes in the form of evoked reminiscences in order to humanize Said and allow the readers of the novel to be able to at least understand the reason behind the actions that Said has decided to fulfil in order to repay his "debts". These reminiscences and flashbacks are not arranged chronologically. Moreover the narrative style that Mahfouz used in the Thief and the Dogs was more modernized in terms of character, theme and structure. His narrative was seen as breaking away from the more panoramic narration and old meticulous details. In addition through Said's stream of consciousness. Mahfouz at that time was suffering from a everlasting sense that he was being pursued, and in addition that he believed that under the political order after the Egyptian Revolution their lives were forfeit and had no meaning, For that reason when Mahfouz wrote the Thief and the Dogs, he was putting some of his own life story in the novel. The stream of consciousness is used in flashbacks of Said's life in order to show more about his past and to build up the conflict and tension while also to slow down the very fast development of the novel. For example, Mahfouz used the Stream of Consciousness in Chapter 10 where Said reminisces about Sana who is his daughter rejecting him after his release from prison as well as the faces in his ex-wife Nabiwiyya and Ilish which makes the reader sympathetic to the cause of revenge that Said has embarked on. This flashback humanizes Said and shows how hurt he feels from the betrayals of Ilish, Nabiwiyya and Rauf who for Said personally was considered and older brother and an idol. Overall Naguib Mahfouz by introducing the stream of consciousness portrays how Said as a protagonist is thinking about the people whom he loves and he hated while also most importantly giving the reader an understanding about how Said thinks and manages his inner and outer conflicts which are his demons.

Extension.


Naguib Mahfouz novel the thief and the dogs shares similarities with Chinua Achebe novel Things fall apart such as the protagonists feeling entraped and that everyone is against them. Also the plot and the significance of both novels culturally are extremely important not only to respective cultures but are recognized worldwide. Differences include the Stream of Consciousness used by Mahfouz in order to show the thought process of Said while Achebe uses a third omniscient narrator to show the full image of the novel.

Text in Translation

Translating texts is always hard because the translation of that said text can dilute the meaning that the original text wanted to convey. For example there was an author in China called Feng Tang who translated the poems of Rabindranath Tagore, which is a 300 plus poem collection. Tang is highly considered one of the most controversial writers due to his own style of writing, which can be quite offensive. His translation of Tagore's poems was considered offensive and vulgar as well as critics called him hormone obsessed with colossal insecurity. The difficulties of translation remind me of a quote by Amara Lakhous  “So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontier of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors.”. This quote shows both the beauty of education given through translation but also the drawback is that if the cultural message is altered by the translation it could create an uproar. Even through the challenges that translation can have, when the translation is read there could be a sense of cultural connectivity where the translation is received and the messaged is understood. Furthermore translations brighten people horizons by making them see the full picture as well as comprehend from different perspectives. Although translation can be difficult on conveying the message, the overall beauty of translation is the connection of different cultures through the same piece of literature or language.

Opinion Column and Editorial Blog

How has the text borrowed from other texts, and with what effects?

This opinion column come from the Ringer and it is about the best performing NFL player on the worst football team. The column extracts a variety of different statistics in order to make an argument for each NFL player being the best performer on his football team. Furthermore the personal statements used about the performance of the player shows the personal biased the author but it is eliminated by the statistics given because statistics aren't biased.

How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

This editorial, comes from fox news and it is about migrants trying to pass the border to go to California from Mexico illegally. This story portrays the migrants as animals trying to find salvation and President Trump stated that the Border Patrol would not going to put up with this kind of behavior. Furthermore US authorities would arrest anyone who would pass illegally the border. This portrays the Mexican immigrants who are trying to find a new home, full of opportunities as enemies of the state and a threat to Americans. This is happening because the President is trying to enforce the rule that if anyone tries to pass the border illegally they would be imprisoned if caught in order to not make this phenomenon a norm

New York TImes Article towards birth outside marriage

1: How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?

The article "For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside of Marriage" is about births outside marriage being the normal. This text can be read and interpreted differently by people. The conservatives are all about tradition and they are less adaptable to change, which means the prefer to marry before having children whereas liberals are more open to change and throughout the decades the are the ones shifting and going away from tradition in order to achieve their own happiness. Furthermore liberals reading this can be empowered and encouraged as well as feel empathetic towards "Amber Strader" because of having to grow a child alone and not willing to marry but conservatives might be appalled, because of the break in tradition

2: Which social groups are marginalized, excluded or silenced within the text?

Within the text, the author excluded minorities with the use of bias through selection and omission. For example the boyfriend of Amber was portrayed as a part-time house painter who was reluctant to wed, which immediately paints a bad image for guys in relationships in general. Another instance where social groups are marginalized is where the author through the use of bias through statistics states that blacks have more kids outside marriage in comparison with latinos and whites.

TEWWG - Style Inquiry Passages.

Passage 1: Chapter 1

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they
 come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon,
never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes
 away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is
 the life of men.
Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember,
 and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the
 truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back
 from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at
the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the
bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.

Passage 2: Chapter 9

Most of the day she was at the store, but at night she was
 there in the big house and sometimes it creaked and cried all
night under the weight of lonesomeness. Then she'd lie awake in
 bed asking lonesomeness some questions. She asked if she
wanted to leave and go back where she had come from and try to
 find her mother. Maybe tend her grandmother's grave. Sort of
 look over the old stamping ground generally. Digging around
inside of herself like that she found that she had no interest in
 that seldom-seen mother at all. She hated her grandmother and
had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity. She
 had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in
search of people; it was important to all the world that she should
 find them and they find her. But she had been whipped like a cur
 dog, and run off down a back road after things. It was all accord-
ing to the way you see things. Some people could look at a mud-
puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that
 other kind that loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the
 biggest thing God ever made, the horizon—for no matter how
 far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you—and
pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it
 about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her.

Passage 3: Chapter 2

It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent
most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard.
 She had been spending every minute that she could steal from
 her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to
 say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her
to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to
glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of
bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a
flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered
again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had noth-
ing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out
smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and
caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely
 felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried
themselves in her flesh. Now they emerged and quested about
 her consciousness.
She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in
 the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the pant-
ing breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to
 her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom;
the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the
 ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in
every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!
She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a
 pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.

Their Eyes were watching God and This is Water

In what ways could Wallace's theory be applicable to their eyes were watching god?

Hurston's novel "Their Eyes were Watching God" follows Janie a black woman in the South of America in the early 1900's, who survives through a troublesome life in the still racist and sexist South of the US. In correlation with David Foster Wallace's piece "This is Water", whose main thesis is to be your own person, don't have to adjust to the normal stereotypes of society but through your own life experiences create an image of what life should be in your eyes and make your own choices in life.

More in depth "their eyes were watching god" follows Janie Crawford through her life's story where she sets of to find true love, which she has been told from the Nanny that it comes after marriage. After two failed marriages where she hasn't found true love, with ugly and old Logan Killicks, then with power hungry Joe "Jody" Starks who died because of kidney issues, she found true love in a much younger man called Tea Cake who treated her with respect she demanded, because although she was a black woman in the South of America she is a strong, empowering and even though the stereotype was to punish women and that men are superior to women, Janie stood out of that stereotype, which is applicable to Wallace's main theory that life is about choice and abut living your own life without restrictions. Tea Cake to Jamie was Romeo to Juliet, a man that she loved with all her heart and even though at the end she ended up killing her true love from all that life experience she had had she felt absolved and emotionally intelligent. Throughout all her three marriages she becomes more self-aware about life in general and the evils of society as it was in the 1900's in the South.

The commencement speech that was given by David Foster Wallace ensured in my belief that even though life is full of stereotypes if you follow your own choices and become aware in situations that most people are foreign to you can live a life of happiness and not judge other people on their situations, which Zora Neale Hurston also concurs with TEWWG novel.