ABSTRACT
Reduced to its basics, the study of any creative writer must consist of an examination of the elements of his attitude to the human condition and the methods he employs to translate this attitude into artistic form. This is what I have tried to do here by looking at Mahfouz’s oeuvre through the stages of its evolution over a fifty-year period. In a study that is essentially an attempt at an overview of the total significance of the author’s voluminous output, dwelling continually on matters of structure and technique was neither possible nor desirable. However, no appreciation of an artist’s achievement would be complete without close attention to his workshop mannerisms: in the case of a novelist, how he structures plot, portrays character, uses language, etc. I have therefore sought to offer an insight into Mahfouz’s craft as a novelist by singling out for close inspection one of his mainstream later short novels, namely Respected Sir, published in 1975.1
THE PLOT
The story of Respected Sir is a simple one, centred on one character, through whose eyes everything is seen and round whom everything revolves; all other characters in the novel are important only inasmuch as they serve to throw light on him, whether by comparison and contrast, or by just being a catalyst in his life. The novel begins with the protagonist in his late teens. This is not stated in the text, but as we are told he is appointed archives clerk immediately after his attainment of the diploma of secondary
education (p. 4); it will not therefore be wrong to assume that he was then around the age of 17 or 18. The book ends with the protagonist on his death-bed, near retirement age. Thus the novel almost covers the whole lifetime of the main character, or perhaps one should say ‘career’, since cUthman’s career has been the very focus of his life. Indeed, it is not without significance that the story opens with cUthman, submissively standing in ‘the blue room’, among others, in front of the Director-General, on the day he begins his civil servant’s career at the lowest point in the service, as archives clerk; and that it closes with him awaiting death in a hospital room, his thoughts focused on that other room which he knew he was never going to occupy, despite his appointment as director-general. Thus the contrast between the two rooms emphasizes the basic irony in the protagonist’s end. In the following pages I will attempt to review the elements of the story in Respected Sir and examine their relation to theme and character.
