[I wrote this essay for an accelerated English course during my senior year of high school. The teacher gave six suggested topics, but I choose to make my own refuting all of them. He called me to his office told that it was the "worst thing I've read in my entire teaching career." I promptly got an F after which he told me to rewrite it or he'd kick me out of his class. Not wanting to screw myself over for college over such a matter, I complied. Later, my parents were called in (without my knowledge) to school on the request of my English teacher and counselor. They discussed my rebellious essay and its great disrespect, as my parents later told me. In Soviet Politburo style, even though I was on campus and unaware of this "secret council," I was not called to the office to defend myself. The text below (minus the picture obviously) is the failed essay I originally gave the teacher.]
Naguib MahfouzPresented by the usual set of topics that refuse to stir my imagination, I am tempted to turn this assignment on its head. In the past I would oblige to make something up to please a teacher. However, the current topics are somewhat of a superficial travesty to the book. None of the topics succeed at grasping why Palace Walk won a Nobel Peace Prize.
The topics merely state small portions of what the author wanted to communicate in a manner that doesn't hint at an overlying concept to connect the ideas. Yes, there was patriotism in the book. I could compile a list that shows how the different characters reacted to the foreign occupying forces. The father didn't care too much about them, as long as the soldiers didn't obstruct him in his "escapades." Kamal, on account of his naïveté, mistakenly believed that the soldiers befriended him. Fahmy, on account of his revolutionary aspirations, collectively hated the soldiers. And the women, due to their ignorance, did little more than make quasi-pro-Egyptian statements with the omnipresent phrase "Allah willing." They agreed with the men, as on all matters. As the book isn't about patriotism, but something deeper, a meaningful essay could not be written on this sole subject.
Yes, self-esteem was tied down (quite literally) to submission. I could write a thesis along the lines of "As Al Sayyid Ahmad's control weakens, the self-esteem of each of the characters grows." I could then define Al Sayyid's control as a power to not only direct the characters to act in a certain way but to view him as perfection. Like a house of cards, I would continue, his godlike veneer peels as each (male) character finds certain aspects of his outside life that severely contrast with his house life. As Yasin sees his own father in a whorehouse, he realizes that no man can be faithful. Though incorrectly blaming only women for his own lust, Yasin accepts that it isn't his fault for being so lecherous. When told of his father's "adventures" by Yasin, Fahmy is quickly emboldened as never before. As he didn't dare ask his father for permission to marry his neighbor, he openly defies his father by announcing that he a part of the revolution. While Kamal is too little to understand the hypocrisy of his father, Kamal is certainly at least aware of some gross difference. As intriguing as these points are, they simply play a minor role in the book. They only point in the vague direction of the meaning of the book.
Yes, there is proof to be found that the stern, "unchanging protagonist" realizes that his strict dictatorship isn't working. As his empathy and emotions certainly emerge over his son's death, it is questionable as to how a three to five page essay could be constructed on material that only starts in the last two pages of the book. Certainly, the book's whole meaning cannot be found in the last two pages lest the previous 300 pages be completely worthless.
Yes, I could write an essay on Kamal's views. They'd be funny, exaggerated, and mistaken, but above all childish. With good reason of course: he is a child after all. From a pragmatic point of view his thoughts and ideas are completely useless as they allude to nothing higher or more meaningful, as Kamal is someone who doesn't yet fully understand his surroundings.
Yes, Fahmy is a lone rebel who undergoes the eternal tragedy in a fight for his individuality against his father. Just as I could write an essay about the writing of this "rebellious" essay, such an essay of an essay would miss my original point, as the focus would shift. In other words: While the full meaning of the book is brought out by the interaction of the characters, Palace Walk is too complex to have to depend on a single character to explain its meaning. Even simpler: the nature of the whole is described by its parts not vice versa. Deliciously: rocky road ice cream isn't "rocky road" because of the nuts or marshmallows or chocolate chunks but because of the nuts and marshmallows and chocolate chunks.
And finally, yes, Palace Walk is an allegory for social change. But that statement is too simple to mean anything. Such factual statements are answered by the question, "So what?" It is all too self-evident as even in a "non-action" book as Palace Walk that evolution of plot, characters, and their interactions change in some fashion. As one of the themes of the book is the social aspect of Egyptian life, it is to be expected that social change does occur and is therefore reflected in the book. While this topic comes closer to understanding the book (as it actually touches an overarching theme in the book) this too misses the point.
All six topics have two things in common: their collective failure to grasp the underlying concept and their axiomatically rhetorical nature. In fact, their simplicity determines that they fail to grasp the concept. Simplicity to the tune of the obvious in turn does not produce Nobel Peace Prize winners. There must be something deeper that brings the book any sort of coherent meaning.
To understand the point of any written work, a simple question must be posed, "Who was the audience of the author?" Any author writes to his audience. Otherwise there'd be no point in writing. If the written word cannot change anything, then why bother? Since this book was written in Arabic, the audience can be presumed to be to Arabic (presuming a mostly Egyptian).
While I did state that no one character can explain the meaning of the book, perhaps the character that is the focus of the book can lead nearer to its meaning. Naguib Mahfouz, as an Arab living in an Arab country, obviously saw a cloud of hypocrisy over some households, or rather their strongmen, the husbands. He noticed their strict, tough, macho image as acted out at home and saw their lustful, wild side at night. Since to this day, it's mostly men that do the reading in Muslim cultures, Mahfouz wanted to communicate a terse message: Hypocrites watch out, your kingdom is fast collapsing. He wanted to showcase the mostly mental brutalities committed against women in the name of "masculine" superiority. By exposing blatant hypocrisies in men, Mahfouz thought that women would be treated on a more equal basis.
Mahfouz does not want us to find cute interactions, as they are already visible on the outside (as the proving of the simplicity of the six topics shows). To look for them beyond the surface is to dive so deep into the unchartered territories of the book so as to lose the original meaning for the interactions between the characters: To provide a warning to hypocrites in his culture. If this isn't the meaning of the book, why was he stabbed by the very fundamentalists whose hypocritical ideas he criticized?