The empty café - 1

(Elements and features of modernism)

(ARS101-ENG06)

Lecture (5)

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

Symbol of the empty café (1/2)
• In the Empty Café, Naguib Mahfouz illustrates the loneliness of an old
man after his wife’s death. With the death of his wife, he loses his last
friend in the world which creates his life meaningless. When he goes
to a café, he asks himself that “why’s the café so empty?” and right
after this, it is mentioned that actually there is few unoccupied tables.
It is also mentioned that “it is empty of any friend or acquaintances”
(80). Through this expression, Mahfouz depicts that the life becomes
empty if we do not have any friend to share our feelings same as a
café is considered empty when there is no people sitting inside. The
old man lives with his son, daughter-in-law and grandson but none of
them is his friend to whom he can share his thoughts. So, the empty
café symbolizes the old man who has no friend.
Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU
Symbol of the empty café (2/2)
• The Empty Café tells of the loneliness of old age: a long life, as the
old man says, is a curse. It is as though he no longer belongs to the
human race, having outstripped all his contemporaries, and ends by
hoping to find companionship in another species, the cat belonging to
his young, over-rambunctious grandson.

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

The despairing individual in the face of the unmanageable future / Loneliness: man
is condemned to live in the prison of his own incommunicable consciousness.

Protagonist
The possibility / impossibility of love

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

In third-person limited point of view, the narrator reveals the thoughts
of only one character, referring to that character as “he” or “him”. Loneliness

Disillusionment: lost illusions/

unfulfilled hopes/ shattering of
ideals
Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU
In first-person point of view, the narrator is a character in the story, referred to as “I.”

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 Exploration of the relationship of the self and the world

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 Individualism: the world is seen through the
individual’s inner feelings & mental states
alienation

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 The despairing individual in the face of the
unmanageable future

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

Meaninglessness and absurdity of life

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 Search for Rebellion &
identity Rejection of
the past.

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 Rebellion &
Rejection of
the past.

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 Setting

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 alienation

Antagonist
Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU
 The possibility / impossibility of love

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU

 Conflict

Dr. Ehab Atta Modern Arabic Literature MIU