“The Cairo Trilogy” by Naguib Mahfouz (post 3): Book One has Unacknowledged Multiple Personality and Split Inconsistent Narrative

Book One (“Palace Walk”) appears to have been written by two different narrative personalities—one writing the first half and another writing the second half—as indicated by changes in word usage and perspective.

First, as noted previously, several of the characters were continually mentioning the jinn: out of fear, in Qur’an study, or as a metaphor in conversation. And since the jinn are in the Qur’an and part of the culture, and the cast of characters had not changed, I expected the use of this word to remain fairly common. But by the second half of Book One, the jinn are rarely mentioned. And this change in word usage suggests a different narrator.

Second, the father’s behavior alternates between how he is with his family and how he is away from his family throughout Book One. But the reason given for his alternating behavior in the first half (unacknowledged multiple personality) and the second half (family management technique) represent different narrative perspectives.

Unacknowledged Multiple Personality

“His life was composed of a diversity of mutually contradictory elements, wavering between piety and depravity…His conduct issued directly from his special nature…two separate people…(1, pp. 47-48).

“Kamal [one of his sons, accidentally coming upon his father, away from home] was stunned. He stood nailed to the spot, taking in his father’s relaxed, laughing face with indescribable incredulity and astonishment. He could not believe his eyes. He imagined that a new person had taken over his father’s body or that this laughing man, much as he resembled Kamal’s father, was a different individual whom he was seeing for the first time” (1, p. 233).

Another of the father’s sons accidentally comes upon his father away from home: “He plays the tambourine better than a professional…He tells jokes that make his companions die from laughter…Who could this man be?…Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad? That stern, tyrannical, terrifying, God-fearing, reserved man who kills everyone around him with fright?…There must be some confusion between two men with similar names. There could be no relationship between his father and this tambourine-playing lover…Perhaps most amazing of all, he had never before seen his face smile” (1, pp. 266-268).

Family Management Technique

Beginning about three-fifths of the way into the novel, and consistently thereafter, the unannounced new narrator, sometimes at considerable length, interprets the father’s behavior, not as alternating personalities, but as a common sense, family management technique: “He would have to be firm or the family structure would be destroyed” (1, p. 336). This is a distinct change in narrative perspective from that of the first three hundred pages.

Comment

Distracted by the plot, I doubt I would have noticed any discrepancy between the beginning and the end, if I had not seen the same kind of thing previously: multiple personality, unlabelled, but implied, in the first half of a novel, is omitted or ignored in the second half. This is the first time that I also noticed a change in word usage.

Having seen this kind of narrative change a number of times, with different writers, I am confident in the phenomenon, but I am not confident in my term for it, “split inconsistent narrative (SIN),” because it may not be easy to remember, unless you think it’s a sin, which I don’t. It’s just one possible manifestation of multiple personality trait that is seen in some novels.

1. Naguib Mahfouz. The Cairo Trilogy [1956-7]. Translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan. Introduction by Sabry Hafez. New York, Everyman’s Library/Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Added January 25, 2019: If this book were analyzed by computer programs for Author Attribution or Stylometry, would they say that more than one person wrote it?