[onegame]

Hello
I have to talk about dictatorship and corruption as two defining features in the novel but I don't know how to do it. Could anyone tell me how to analyze it? Just an outline, please!

[Wondergirl]

Did you read the book?

From Wikipedia --

The stories of each of the primary characters are often intertwined, very horrible at times colliding or converging with one another. Together, they give a biting condemnation of a nation that has squandered its promise and which has been forced to compromise its own principles, resulting in a corrupt and undemocratic political system dominated by a single party (the fictitious "Patriotic Party", a thinly-veiled version of Egypt's National Democratic Party), a society whose most talented members abandon the country for promising careers abroad, and an increasingly disenchanted and restive populace that has no loyalty to the government and which sees extremist Islam as one of the few viable options to counter growing poverty, economic stagnation, and a perceived degradation of morals and lack of social cohesion.

[onegame]

Yes, I did read it.
What I need is a guideline of how to analyze the theme of corruption in this novel. I don't know even how to start it :(

[Wondergirl]

Yes, I did read it.
What I need is a guideline of how to analyze the theme of corruption in this novel. I don't know even how to start it :(

Make a chart and list each character and his "story." Who was corrupt? Why? What is Zaki Bey el Dessouki's story? Who was Taha el Shazli, and what happened to him? How did Hagg Muhammad Azzam find success and wealth? And so on. How did their lives intertwine? What does that say about the promise of a country compromising its principles?

[onegame]

And how do I add dictatorship to the aspects of corruption? Before going through each character's story, I have to introduce the theme of dictatorship and corruption in the novel, how am I supposed to do that? Should I just give a general overview about the novel? Or summarize it?

[Wondergirl]

Summarize first. Wikipedia said this --

The novel described the Yacoubian Building as one of the most luxurious and prestigious apartment blocks in Cairo following its construction by Armenian businessman Hagop Yacoubian in 1934, with government ministers, wealthy manufacturers, and foreigners residing or working out of offices there. After the revolution in 1952, which overthrew King Farouk and gave power to Gamal Abdel Nasser, many of the rich foreigners, as well as native landowners and businessmen, who had lived at the Yacoubian fled the country. Each vacated apartment was then occupied by a military officer and his family, who were often of a more rural background and lower social caste than the previous residents.

On the roof of the ten-story building are fifty small rooms (one for each apartment), no more than two meters by two meters in area, which were originally used as storage areas and not as living quarters for human beings, but after wealthy residents began moving from downtown Cairo to suburbs such as Medinet Nasr and El Mohandiseen in the 1970s, the rooms were gradually taken over by overwhelmingly poor migrants from the Egyptian countryside, arriving in Cairo in the hopes of finding employment. The rooftop community, effectively a slum neighborhood, is symbolic of the urbanization of Egypt and of the burgeoning population growth in its large cities in recent decades, especially among the poor and working classes.

The stories of each of the primary characters are often intertwined, very horrible at times colliding or converging with one another. Together, they give a biting condemnation of a nation that has squandered its promise and which has been forced to compromise its own principles, resulting in a corrupt and undemocratic political system dominated by a single party (the fictitious "Patriotic Party", a thinly-veiled version of Egypt's National Democratic Party), a society whose most talented members abandon the country for promising careers abroad, and an increasingly disenchanted and restive populace that has no loyalty to the government and which sees extremist Islam as one of the few viable options to counter growing poverty, economic stagnation, and a perceived degradation of morals and lack of social cohesion.

The Yacoubian Building's treatment of homosexuality is taboo-breaking, particularly for contemporary mainstream Arab literature. Khaled Diab, in an article entitled Cultural rainbows, explores this aspect of the novel, and how this can help change popular attitudes to homosexuality in the Arab world.

[onegame]

Thank you so much!

Could you help me with the definitions of dictatorship and corruption according to Raymond Williams, please? I tried to look it up but I found nothing :(

[Wondergirl]

Thank you so much!

Could you help me with the definitions of dictatorship and corruption according to Raymond Williams, please? I tried to look it up but I found nothing :(

Did you Google his name? He's everywhere.

To do this correctly, go to your local public library and ask this question of a reference librarian who will give you the best sources.

[onegame]

Good idea, though we have no public libraries here.
But thanks :)

[Wondergirl]

Good idea, though we have no public libraries here.

Where are you? A university library will also work for finding biographical and literary information about Williams.

When Googling, I found such a wealth of information about him with his books listed that it would be very difficult for me to post just one or two links to help you. You need to sit down with reference material that isn't on the Internet in order to find out exactly what he is talking about regarding "dictatorship" and "corruption." For instance, there was a whole slew of Latin American dictator novels published that fed from his and others' ideas. Wikipedia has an article about that, but I didn't find anything helpful for your paper.

[onegame]

Well, I'm from an Arab country and our university library, which is the only library in my town, has only books written in Arabic. That's why I'm looking online =\

Could you give me just one or two books where he might be talking about dictatorship?

[Wondergirl]

Hang on. I'll work on it again right now.

These were in the bibliography of the Wikipedia article on L.A. dictator novels --

Williams, Raymond Leslie (1998), The Modern Latin-American Novel, New York: Twayne, ISBN 0-8057-1655-6
Williams, Raymond Leslie (2003), The Twentieth-Century Spanish American Novel, Austin: University of Texas Press, ISBN 0-292-79161-5

You really need a literary resource that talks about him and his ideas on culture. You don't have time to wade through his books. Did the professor ever talk about him in class? Why is he being mentioned now?

Only books in Arabic are in your uni library? Yet you speak the king's English? How have you found your way through the uni library so far?

[Wondergirl]

There is also a Raymond Williams --

Amazon.com: Raymond Williams: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

Maybe he is your guy. What has your instructor ever said about this man?

[onegame]

Thanks!

In the novel there's this guy Taha El Shazli who's treated with inferiority because he's the building's doorkeeper son. Everyone mocks him for that. So what I want to know, could this be considered as an aspect of dictatorship?

[Wondergirl]

Thanks!

In the novel there's this guy Taha El Shazli who's treated with inferiority because he's the building's doorkeeper son. Everyone mocks him for that. So what I want to know, could this be considered as an aspect of dictatorship?

I'd say no.

From Wikipedia --
"Taha el Shazli – the son of the building doorman, he excelled in school and hoped to be admitted to the Police Academy but found that his father's profession, considered too lowly by the generals conducting his character interview, was an obstacle to admission; disaffected, he enrolls at the University and eventually joins a militant Islamist organization modeled upon the Jamaa Islamya."

What about the Patriotic Party [Kamal el Fouli]? "the nation has squandered its promise and has been forced to compromise its own principles, resulting in a corrupt and undemocratic political system dominated by a single party."

[onegame]

I already wrote about Kamal El Fouli when he said “People are naïve when they get the idea that we fix elections. Nothing of the kind. It just comes down to the fact that we've studied the Egyptian people well. Our lord created the Egyptians to accept government authority. No Egyptian can go against his government. Some people are excitable and rebellious by nature but the Egyptian keeps his head down his whole life long so he can eat. It says so in the history books. The Egyptians are the easiest people in the world to rule. The moment you take power, they submit to you and grovel to you and you can do what you want with them…� [p 84]

But I'm looking for other aspects and they seem too hard to find!

[Wondergirl]

From a blog --

Al Aswany likes to keep his fiction separate from politics, though the distinction is not always clear. As a member of the leftist Enough movement, he has been a consistent opponent of the Egyptian regime. “The official people don't like me very much, and I think they don't like me at all. But my troubles are minimal compared to my comrades in the movement, who have been jailed for months and tortured. This did not happen to me, so far.”

However he wasn't invited to the premiere of the film of The Yacoubian Building. “A high-ranked person of the regime was due to go, and the security people didn't feel comfortable that I would probably meet this guy. I am not a very safe person, in their opinion.”

His broad view is that the problems of the Arab world are caused by the absence of democracy. “I had a medical education and in medicine it's essential to make the difference between the disease and the symptoms and complications. If you try to cure the symptoms without knowing the disease you kill the patient. This is also valid for societies. So our disease for the Arab world is dictatorship. The symptoms and complications are corruption, injustice, poverty and fanatism.

“Arab dictators try to convince us that the symptoms are the disease. So you have this nonsense – government people on TV saying 'how can we fight terrorism?' The only way to get rid of terrorism is to give the people the right of choice – democracy.”

I still think Kamal El Fouli and the misnamed Patriotic Party symbolize and personify dictatorship and corruption.

[onegame]

I talked to my teacher today and he said that Kamal El Fouli doesn't represent dictoatorship alone. But all I could find in the novel are charcters who symbolize corruption alone. I don't know but what could the signs of being a dictator be?

[Wondergirl]

I talked to my teacher today and he said that Kamal El Fouli doesn't represent dictoatorship alone. But all I could find in the novel are charcters who symbolize corruption alone. I don't know but what could the signs of being a dictator be?

Do you have to link dictatorship to a character? I got the impression the country's weaknesses (mind-set of the citizens) contributed to corruption and a dictatorship.

[onegame]

Yes, I have to link it to a character. And that only made it harder, though I read the novel like 3 times! Any hint of how I should find it would be really appreciated.