Half a Day

The unnamed narrator of Mahfouz’s story is (or at least appears to be) a young Egyptian boy just old enough to begin attending school. He is reluctant to leave his parents and is initially timid and shy while interacting with his classmates and teachers. However, he settles in quickly and seems to thrive in his new environment, making friends and speaking animatedly about all he has learned.

Beyond these plot points, the boy has few distinguishing character traits. This is partly a function of the story’s short length, but it is also related to the work’s allegorical nature: Providing the boy with a more distinct personality or appearance would undercut his ability to stand in for all of humankind. In fact, the trait that arguably stands out the most—the boy’s eloquence—is also directly related to the story’s symbolic meaning. The boy’s vocabulary and his tendency to philosophize about his surroundings aren’t typical of a school-age child and thus foreshadow his true age at the time he’s narrating the story.

Like the narrator, the boy’s father is in one sense a stand-in for a broader type. By escorting the boy to school and encouraging him to “[b]e a man” (Paragraph 7), he embodies the role of all fathers—that is, to bring their children into life and then shepherd them into adulthood.