Similarities Between Midaq Alley And The Yacoubian Building

In the story “Araby” the protagonist is portrayed by the author to seem young, which limited his ability to see past his dull, dead-end neighborhood. The author explains the boy’s carefree mindset by describing how the protagonist and his friends would run through the back lanes of the houses and hide in the shadows when they reached the street again.

Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.

The city, Toronto in this case, presents a web of streets and geographical space that threatens to lock its citizens in a certain demarcated way of life and conduct. The four key characters in this narrative - Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku - each feel blocked in by the constrained locality that they have been born into and each attempts to escape it in his own way.: Tuyen by being an artist, Carla by being a courier; Oku by being a student and Jackie by working in a store. The first two not only attempt to escape by means of their profession using their profession to either flee the spaces and squares (by bike) or transcend it via imagination (by art) but they also adopt profession that go against societal expectations. These societal expectations were created by, and exist within the geographical space they live in. Toronto of the late 20th century had an internalized set of expectations for immigrants and its citizens. The parents of the characters succumbed to it. The protagonists, however, resolved to step out of their boundaries and most of them succeeded.

whiteness and middle-classness) are some of the structural factors that help to enable women to feel safer in order for them to be able to, “actively produce, define and reclaim urban space” (Kern, 2005, p. 357). Hence, the ability for one to understand their place in a city depends on their gender and class and how they interact with the structural and symbolic elements of urban public spaces. For many women living in the city of Toronto, their experiences of feeling safe, confident, and at home in the city, helps them to better understand their overall placement in a particular urban space. A similar philosophy can be applied to people living in the community of al-Zawiya in Cairo, as discussed by Farha Ghannam in her ethnography, “Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo”. Similarly to Kern, Ghannam also makes the argument that social structures such as gender help people to understand their place in the

The plot in “A&P” begins when the three girls who walk into the grocery store wearing their bathing suits. The conflict of the plot is the the girls who walked into the grocery store wearing nothing but their bathing suits. In this time period it was socially unacceptable for girls to walk around showing a lot of skin. The manager, Lengel confronted the girls for dressing inappropriately and because of this Sammy quits his job right after Lengle confronted the girls. Sammy removed his apron and bow tie and walked out of the store. When Sammy gets outside he expects the girls to be waiting for him but they are gone. The plot in “Araby” starts by the narrator telling the readers how he is obsessed with Mangan’s sister. He says “Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped” (Joyce 331). Mangan's sister tells the narrator about the Araby. She tells him that she wants to go but cannot. The narrator decides that he is going to go to the Araby to get his crush a gift. When he gets there most of the stalls are closed and he does not have enough money to buy her anything so he comes home with nothing. The

Elijah Anderson published a novel called “The Cosmopolitan Canopy” where he looks at the “race and civility of everyday life”, as he puts it. He throughout the novel defines the “cosmopolitan canopy” as accepting of people from all backgrounds. In other words, the canopy is composed of a diverse population, lots of people and public spaces. Most importantly it has the spirit of positivity and civility. The best example of this would be Reading Terminal market in Philadelphia. Anderson believes that it epitomizes the idea because of how interactive people of different races, social and economic classes are getting along (10). The novel looks critically at public space in Philadelphia, who is allowed in them and how people interact within them.

Midaq Alley, published in 1947 and released in English in 1966, was written by the prolific Nobel prize-winning author, Naguib Mahfouz. The novel is set in Cairo during the Second World War and follows the inhabitants of the titular alley. One of the inhabitants is the young and beautiful Hamida, who lives in an apartment building with her adoptive mother. Mafouz makes Hamida’s personality clear: she is confrontation personified:

“Araby,” is a story of emotional passion carefully articulated by the author, James Joyce, to mark the end of childhood and the start of adolescence. It is told from the perspective of a young boy who is filled with lust for his friend, Mangan’s, sister. He lives in a cheerless town on a street hosting simply complacent families who own brown faced houses that stare vacantly into one another. The boy temporarily detaches himself from this gloomy atmosphere and dwells on the keeper of his affection. Only when he journeys to a festival titled Araby, does he realize that his attempt at winning the heart of Mangan’s sister has been done in an act of vanity. Joyce takes advantage of literary elements such as diction and imagery to convey an at times dreary and foolishly optimistic tone.

The novel, Midaq Alley, written by Naguib Mahfouz, tells the story of various characters living in a poor alley in Egypt during World War I. Of all the people in Midaq Alley, Hamida is the one who lusts most for an escape from tradition and poverty. She despises her traditional culture, and longs for a life free from the social and cultural constraints that fall upon her. Hamida is introduced as a strong character; however, the temptation of modernization guides her towards a more enticing lifestyle. Hamida’s character portrays how easy it is for one to abandon their culture, traditions and values.

The novel of interest The Yacoubian Building written by Alaa Al Aswany has been praised by scholars since the material highlights the taboo of homosexuality and offers insight about Egyptian society and its culture. The effects of gender roles of men and women of society present itself in the life and lifestyles of Hatim and Busayna who are two prominent characters in the text. Through reading the text, it becomes clear that normative understandings of gender confine both the male and female character in the novel, surfacing itself in the form of an opposite both of their beings. More specially, while Busayna must degrade herself to get ahead and gain employment in the societal world, Hatim is allowed freedom to chase and capitalize on his

Cities of Salt has often been read as at once an elegy for a disfigured space and society, and a chronicle of its transformation. How does Munif represent the encounter with and effects of global capital and its arrival? How are tradition, traditional social ties on the one hand, and the encounter with the foreign other represented? What are the limitations and potential problems of attempting to write such a work? Elaborate!

The theme of "Midaq Alley" cuts to the heart of Arab society. Namely, it shows how a group of characters living in the same slum neighborhood responds to the combined promise and threat of Western-influenced modernization. Midaq Alley is about the Egyptian residents of a hustling, packed back alley in Cairo in the 1940's. The attempts of several residents to escape the alley and move up in status end with dreams broken and unfulfilled. The opening sentences of "Midaq Alley" points to a world bypassed by history: "Many things combine to show that Midaq Alley is one of the gems of times gone by and that it once shone forth like a flashing star in the history of Cairo. Which Cairo do I mean? That of the Fatimids, the Mamlukes or the

The work of literature “Midaq Alley” by Naguib Mahfouz introduces the audience an Arab culture through his descriptions of different characters. Each character is used as an analogue, representing people in the alley with different beliefs and ambitions. Moreover, the characteristics of Mahfouz’s characters also draw international readers’ attention concerning how westernization takes place.

First and foremost, the environment impacted Ali’s family. The main characters were Ali and Zahra, and their family was needy. In environmental perspective, these buildings were next to each other, it seemed that residents got along well with each other. The shopkeeper also knew Ali’s name and his family, which showed everyone knew everyone in the community ; However, the reality was that poor people in the community must confront inequity, hence Ali can only purchase degraded products. Focused on the interpersonal relationships, the environment bridged the distance between people and people, but the environment also had negative effect on each family. Concretely, Ali’s family did not have proud social position, because the family could not posses enough sources to achieve tremendous promotion in this environment, and the analogous families were abound by fours and fives.

Setting is used in literature in order to set the time and place as well as the mood within a literary piece. Mahfouz uses various settings throughout the novel in order to showcase the development of Hamida’s rebellious character. The different settings come together to deliver the important message of Hamida’s literal and metaphoric entrapment, loss of her identity, and the development of her rebelliousness. Since the novel takes place during WWII in the 1940s, it brings about the idea of modernization due to the colonization of the British, which shows that the setting plays a major role in portraying Hamida as a rebellious character. As Midaq Alley is a translated book from Arabic to English, it may have lost its original value in