All cultures have had death as a dominant theme throughout history. The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Maffouz examines the nature of death and the connections it has with the rest of life. After witnessing the chaos caused by the Egyptian revolutions in childhood, it’s no surprise that Mahfouz created a fictional world. The protagonist is required to confront the modern world and return to the core values of tradition, including the relationship between life & death. Mahfouz’s use the cemetery symbol to express the confusion and betrayal of his protagonist helps clarify Mahfouz’s view on death. Said Mahran’s insidious pursuit of death was embodied by the symbolism of the cemetery.

The immense cemetery serves as the backdrop to the novel. It symbolizes Said Mahran’s psychotic decadence. Although Said’s sudden death appears to be a shock, it is not. Mahfouz’s use the cemetery symbol to indicate that Said knew at some point of his impending death. As Nur, after a long work day, asks Said, “How do you spend your time?” and Said replies dejectedly, “between shadows and graves.” (157). Slowly, the shadows make their way into Said’s life and gradually take his sanity away. Said becomes a mere physical form, without any emotion or spirit, after the dogs surround him. Said is gradually deprived of human emotion and reason by the symbolism in the cemetery. He speaks to himself once and said: “The silence at the graves can be more intense, but the light cannot be switched on…your eyes are going to get used dark like they were to prison, all those horrible faces” (95). Said stares at his murderer of his sanity, which is the silence of graves. Said’s hatred of his traitors causes him to feel an uncontrollable darkness over his life. Said was undisputedly “plunged away among the tombs into a maze path”. (155). Said’s final fate is unforeseeable, but it is inevitable. The ‘phantom, or the death,’ appears out of the shadows. He stalks the darkness. Revenge, a plague that takes Said’s soul, is the result of hatred, greed and a growing desire to kill. Said is psychologically killed many times in the quiet solitude of the cemetery. Then, the paranoia and hatred that plague him become more fervent as they take over his physical existence. The story is about characters from the lowest social classes, such as criminals or prostitutes. Thus, they are in a sense, already “underground”–buried in their own graves, while a new nation, created by the Egypt 1952 Revolution, carries on above them. Said’s personal symbol, the cemetery, becomes symbolic of his worldview. The graveyard is a direct link to Said’s intense emotional animosity. Said is fondly aware of those who had betrayed and are associated with the graveyard, as though the entire world is dead to him. Said’s temporary home is marked by the presence of a large graveyard. This serves to remind him that he is more isolated in the world than all his dead relatives. His deceased father appears to be in a dream state, far from violent reality. He also doesn’t mention his mother. Said does not feel any emotional connection to the graves. The cemetery’s silence is so imposing that it discourages him ruminating about the Afterlife and the Dead. Said does not find companionship in the cemetery’s melancholy, and those still around him seem to be equally indifferent. Said considers the Living to be just as worthless as the dead, and associates them in the cemetery with the buried remains. Said’s belief in the afterlife is represented by the cemetery.

Said may have a dismal worldview and a spiritual loneliness. The symbolism, however, serves as an antithesis. In irony, it is Said’s strength. Said has no emotional attachment to the buried ones, but he believes in its ethereal qualities and melancholic authority. Said’s belief in the cemetery’s unknown power is more important than his faith that he can trust the Sheikh. Said believes that the cemetery has a greater spiritual power than the Sheikh, and that he can seek spiritual support there. Ironically, it’s also where Said will be buried. Thus, he returns to his place of strength. Said thinks of “all the things that are out there in a graveyard under the window to help him” (114). Said is able to use the solemn authority of underground dead corpses, which in their entirety, breathe in silence, to fuel his insaneness and continue his quest for revenge. Death seems to mock the minor conflicts that bother the living. This suggests that death is surreal. The Dead can never tell the story of their lives to the Living. Plato said that the final truth, or final revelation, is what those who seek it will always be on the ‘other side’. Said Mahran believes that death represents the final revelation as well as the final reality. This belief allows him to embrace death with ease. Mahfouz described the cemetery in a respectful tone: “What an abundance of graves there are, laid out to the limit of the eye’s vision.” Their headsstones look like they are expressing their gratitude. “A city of silence, truth, and murder, where victims and thieves meet, where policemen and thieves lie side-by side in peace for first and last time.” (89). The theme of harmony that is prevalent in the cemetery is an overlapping theme. The cemetery symbolizes death, and the city is described as one with all the opposites living in harmony.

Said, who was trying to understand the abstract notion of death and afterlife, got lost and finally resolved to attribute his confusion to the mysterious pull that the cemetery exerts over us all. He said, “As for the rest of the riddle, I’ll trust Sheik Ali” (114). Said becomes more focused on his present, instead of trying to find the meanings and afterlife of death. Said is suddenly able to see the “truth” that he had been seeking, and he feels fulfilled spiritually. Said feels this spiritual fulfillment when he admits to Nur that being with him, even after being out in the bullets, is almost like being in Paradise (128) True fulfillment does not lie in the mosque of Sheikhs or in the Afterlife in the cemetery. But it is within his control. The revelation, although it came too late, brings him true happiness in his last moments. His appreciation of the present life is what gives him the opportunity to realize that there is more than humankind can comprehend.

There are myths, theories, literature, and stories about death in every civilization. Each perspective is unique because the quest to understand the meaning of life or death is never ending. The cemetery’s symbolism shows Said’s cynicism and decaying persona. However, it also transcends Mahfouz’s comment on death. The cemetery’s esoteric beauty reveals that there is no way to know what happens after death. The present world is, it seems, the best place to find the immediate utopia. Baruch Spinoza, a Jewish-Dutch philosopher, stated that everyone desires genuine happiness and continuous happiness. The cemetery’s dual symbolism, however, gives readers the freedom to interpret the relationship between life & death in their own ways.