P2 Really rough practice in 30 minutes

12. Explain, with reference to works you have studied, why writers are frequently drawn to tell stories about characters who are rebellious towards or in some way alienated from society.

[REALLY ROUGH THESIS STATEMENT + Outline]

In TFA and TATD, Mahfouz and Achebe choose to portray their main characters as characters that do not entirely conform to the society that they are in. Despite this, the protagonists are both very attached to their respective societies, and could even represent an ideal person of that society. However, their relatable characteristics and tragic ends provide commentary on the ideals of their societies, our own perceptions of ideals, and the dangers of rejecting our societies' opinions.

TS1

Okonkwo and Said represent their societies ideals, but challenge them, thus revealing various aspects of their own societies in a genuine and realistic way.

TS2

The fact that the protagonists represent the ideal of the societies, but still reject it and get rejected themselves teaches us that sometimes what we believe to be correct may not be.

TS3

They show us how society can be extremely harsh and unforgiving, and that rejecting it in favor of a fanatist ideology, even if it is supporting that society's ideology, may not be the right thing to do.

That one piece of cryptic otherworldly thing that is practically meant to not be understood...

It would seem that all of the parts where Said goes to see the Sheikh there is this certain aura of peace and tranquility. I mean “The old room had hardly changed. [...] the Sheikh’s sleeping mattress still lay close to the western wall, pierced by a window through which the rays of the declining Sun were pouring down at Said’s feet.” I mean, it sounds like a moment out of those old anime that were so calm and detached that you felt kinda high by the end. There is no other place in the story that is so calm… almost heavenly…

The Sheikh is somehow a being that seems to know it all. When Said first arrives at his house in Chapter 2 and says that he seeks his guidance the Sheikh responds “You seek the walls, not the heart.” He also always speaks in a metaphoric language that is rather off compared to the rest of the dialogues in the book. It’s almost as if the Sheikh was not human. As if he was something else. Like a perfectly wise being. A being that resides in heaven only to carry out His word.

You know, there is an interesting point made in The Matrix trilogy by the architect, the creator of the Matrix. He says that the reason that the first Matrix did not succeed was because it was created as a utopia. There was no pain or suffering, only happiness… but the humans could not live that way, and so they revolted to bring it down. It would almost seem as if this idea is repeated here. Said is talking to a man that resides in a perfect, warm and welcoming place. But Said is too human to simply stay there and devote himself to Islam. He needs that rush in life, which he will most certainly lose if he stays in that house. In a sense, it would seem that the Sheikh and his house represent a lost past to Said. A past of peace and happiness that led to a promising future, were it not for his father’s unfortunate death early on that was probably the event that kicked off the little rock that would continue to roll down the mountain until becoming a huge snowball that, literally, kills Said at the end.

However, it would almost seem like Said belongs in that house. The house is the first place that comes to Said’s mind when he gets out of prison to go to for shelter. He even says it himself: “this house is my real home as it always was home for my father and for every supplicant.” Despite this, it seems that Said cut off his ties with this world a long time ago. The Sheikh almost seems angry as he constantly repeats “Wash and read” while Said is telling him the story of his most recent tragedy, and that’s despite the fact that the book says “replied the Sheikh gently.” It would seem that Said has had the opportunity to repent for all his stealing and bad deeds many times before, but has always shunned them away. Said has already set himself on a path of destruction by the time that he comes back to the Sheikh’s house. He is too detached to understand the cryptic words of wisdom the Sheikh is trying to give to him. As Said himself puts it, the Sheikh’s “words [...] cannot be understood by someone approaching hell.” Said is beyond the point of salvation…

I’ll be honest and say that I really am clueless as to what the Sheikh symbolizes. I’ve tried to bring in as many facts as I could to look into them, but the epiphany has not hit me yet. If I had to take a guess, I would say the Sheikh is a representation of a calm, peaceful, and pure world that is beyond the reach of our unfortunate protagonist... Maybe I too am too close to hell to understand... Maybe we all are, because Mahfouz seems to be portraying the guy as way too mean and cryptic for pretty much anyone to understand.

The not so pleasant journey into the mind of the character

When one starts reading Naguib Mahfouz's The Thief and the Dogs the weird use of italics in the middle of the text come across as one of the most intriguing parts. In these words, the narration suddenly shifts into a First Person narration that is practically being delivered as a monologue by Said towards some characters that are completely unknown to the reader. And yet, despite this unconventional break in the narration structure of the  novel, Mahfouz manages to convey his story in an extremely effective way that remains intuitive right off the first paragraph that does this, when the only context that is given is that he just came out of prison and that the weather's hot.

The stream of consciousness in Mahfouz's novel is perhaps the most natural and fluid progression ever. The author jumps around from one point in time to another inside the stream but it still seems perfectly natural. In a sense, the flow of Said's thoughts in The Thief and the Dogs is modeled after the way the human mind records and remembers events. We do not remember things in a linear progression, but rather we tend to recall things at different times in different order, the memories are all cut up, split up and distorted and this shows through in Said's stream of consciousness. He rarely recalls a memory on a specific person fully from the start. It is not until episode ten that we hear the story of how he fell in love with Nabawiyya and it's in episode ten that we learn of how his father died; both of these memories are revealed much after Said makes a first mention of them during the first and second episode respectively. Said recalling his memories in a scattered and discontinuous manner does not throw off the reader because it is natural for us to do that kind of remembering. Replaying a scene from our past in our heads comes natural, and Mahfouz uses this to his advantage to capture the reader and make his novel interesting.

One of the most interesting aspects of the stream of consciousness however, has to do with how the discontinuity and brokenness of his thoughts as well as the progression of the wrath he feels evolves throughout the story. Throughout the first chapters his thoughts are usually coherent and don't vary from one topic to another too suddenly.

Translations... Traducciones... Traductions...

There's a certain charm in the foreign, something that we never voluntarily seek to fully comprehend, but whenever it lands in our lives we can't help but be fascinated. We find it extremely intriguing that foreign human beings - who are always portrayed as an oversimplified out-group in our own media, in our own languages - could have such a striking resemblance to us in the aspects we least expect. Their core human aspects, the ones that we inherently know form a part of our daily lives, but are buried under the layer of politeness that culture spreads upon our lives. 

Texts in another language are the most genuine representation of a person's personal world. The language itself contains an entirely different culture, in their feel and their ideas and expressions. But unfortunately, language is a frontier that is not so easily crossed. Crossing it requires time and understanding, learning a new language to the point where one can connect with it and understand the culture that is engrained within the particular text. However, there is a short-cut to this understanding, albeit a perilous one where a lot must be sacrificed in order to cross over. That is the route of translation.

A work in translation will NEVER feel like the original. Try to translate any poem into any language and you will notice that it doesn't feel like the original. The concepts and ideas transmitted in the translation will lack the essence of the language. Translating from spanish to english causes the roughness and simplicity of the Spanish language to disappear, while going the other way around makes the English language's elegance and sophistication vanish. This type of sacrifice that has to be made in order to trespass the cultural frontiers in texts and gain basic understanding of the ideas. But in a constantly globalizing world where cultures become more and more easily connected with each passing year, learning a new language and experiencing other cultures first hand is easier than ever. So the question has to be asked, is the sacrifice truly worth it? Wouldn't it be better to simply learn the new language and experience the culture first hand? 

Personally, I'd say yes and yes. It would be better, but the sacrifice allows for a connection that would otherwise be hard to create.