The Thief and the Dogs

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-18

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Dogs

Said refers to his betrayers as “dogs” because he has an extremely low opinion of dogs, which he mostly sees scratching around the dirty streets of Cairo. To Said, dogs are the lowest form of life imaginable. Therefore, they are the ideal choice when he is searching for a comparison for the people he detests most in the world. Said uses dogs as a deliberate metaphor to convey his contempt for Ilwan, Ilish, and Nabawiyya. By framing them as dogs, he can convince himself that they are less than human, and by dehumanizing them he can justify his revenge against them.

Said’s own behavior also becomes increasingly doglike over the course of the novel. By the end of Said's life, he is gnawing at bones and sleeping on the floor in a corner of the room. He wanders the streets searching for a home, scratching around in the dark for anything to eat. Said has become the kind of dog which he always hated, not unlike Ilwan. His behavioral transformation is a metaphor for the corrupting power of revenge. He becomes everything that he hates because the hate that he harbors comes to define him in the absence of other systems of belief. Just as Said believes that Ilish, Ilwan, and Nabawiyya are dogs because they betrayed him, he symbolically transforms into one of these dogs because he betrays himself. He abandons his humanity in pursuit of revenge.

At the end of the novel, the metaphorical dogs give way to actual dogs. Said is chased through the cemetery by the police, whose barking dogs hound him to his death. These dogs are symbolic harbingers of Said's downfall. The metaphorical becomes real as he is chased to his death by the very thing he detests. While Ilish, Ilwan, and Nabawiyya are not present in Said's last moments, the literal dogs are a haunting and symbolic reminder of how much he has given up in pursuit of revenge.

Symbolic Settings

Buildings play an important symbolic role in The Thief and the Dogs, providing protection for Said and sheltering him from the outside world. The supposed safety of Nur's apartment succeeds in revealing Said’s limitations. While his story is propagated in the newspapers and Said believes that he is turning into an important folk hero, he is also forced to sit silently in the dark. Though he believes that he has never been more powerful or important, the apartment maintains reality for the reader. Said is stuck inside and is too scared to venture beyond the boundaries of the apartment. His symbolic alienation reflects his real alienation from the society, as he is cut off from reality and propelled forward by delusions of grandeur. While Said believes that he is a powerful hero, the truth is that he is too scared and too alone to even turn on a light. Nur's apartment is a useful symbolic reminder of Said's true status in Cairo.

The Sheikh's house is also imbued with symbolic meaning. Said visited the home with his father when he was a child and he returns to the Sheikh when he is released from prison. Said only goes to the house when he has nowhere else to go. Though he convinces himself that he is outsmarting the Sheikh and taking advantage of the man's hospitality, every time Said returns to the Sheikh he symbolically acknowledges of his own defeat. Said knows that he has nowhere else to go, that he has no other friends, and that he has no real connection to the society which threatens to apprehend him. By returning to the Sheikh's house, Said attempts and fails to reconnect with the belief system of his father, yet can identify no alternatives.

Tarzan's café is a similar symbol of Said's unwitting acknowledgement of his low status. The café is populated by petty criminals and it is one of the only places where Said is welcomed with open arms. Tarzan brings Said into the café and treats him like an old friend. Mahfouz presents the café as Said’s only place to go after he is rebuffed at his former home, rejected by his family, intimidated by his friend’s home and office, and fails to find comfort in the Sheikh’s house. Said feels he has no other options but the criminal underworld, having rejected or been rejected by every other setting. At Tarzan’s café, Said encounters people who genuinely want to help him for the first time in the novel. Ironically, Tarzan and Nur only succeed in helping Said to hasten his own doom.

The Revolver

Tarzan gives Said a revolver. Though Said insists that he wants to pay for it, Tarzan refuses every offer. The gun is a gift from one member of the criminal underworld to another and, at first, functions as a symbolic reintroduction of crime to Said’s life. After a stint in prison, he has immediately acquired a weapon and uses this to rob people that very same night. The immediate acquisition of the revolver shows that Said has not been reformed by prison. Instead, he returns immediately to the only lifestyle that he knows, feeling that he has no other option and ill-prepared to rejoin society.

As the novel develops, the revolver's symbolic meaning evolves. Rather than a signifier of a criminal lifestyle, Said begins to view the weapon as a tool for retribution. The revolver is the weapon he will use to strike back against the people that betrayed him, so it becomes a symbol of his power to exact revenge. Whenever he feels targeted or under suspicion, he clutches the revolver in his pocket to remind himself of the power he possesses. To Said, the revolver is a symbol of his growing importance, and therefore his increasing danger.

The revolver is also a symbol of Said's inadequacy. He fires the gun several times and never hits his intended target. Instead, he kills innocent people. Even in the final showdown with the police, Said tries to use the gun to protect himself but it does not help him. The revolver kills people, but never Said’s intended target. The revolver is a useless tool which fails to deliver on its promise, as do the several different systems of meaning which Said attempts to espouse in the novel.