al- Kilāb by Najib Mahfūz

The expression of novel in literature deals with various literary works whose corner-stones are being written in prose, being like a story and its length. The main elements that convey the theme of a novel are its characters. A novel is an indicator of the behaviours and states of the characters whose unique names and characteristics in an outside world have substitutes that indicate the fate of other members of the society for the reader. The writer of the novel creates the characters from an example of real mankind and tries to indicate their reactions to the deeds and behaviors of themselves and other characters. In a word, it creates an example of a real mankind with all its mental and emotional characteristics. Therefore, in order to create a valuable literary work, he should have enough skills in terms of characterization. The present study is an attempt to indicate the effort of Najib Mahfūz, the famous and contemporary Egyptian novelist, to the element of character and different ways of characterization in his literary works that in this investigation, this phenomenon is just examined in the novel “al-Lis va al-kilāb”. The main motivation in the selection of this character and novel is the place of this literary work in Arabic story writing because some people consider it as a corner-stone in Arabic story writing. This study first investigated the definition and place of character in literature and after enumerating different types of characters and different methods of characterization, the novel will be investigated based on the above mentioned criteria.