Half a Day

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. Likewise, his absence at the end of the school day symbolizes what is arguably the final step in a child’s maturation: their parents’ death. With this in mind, the father’s reassurance to his son that “You will find you waiting for me when it’s time to leave” is truer than it at first appears (Paragraph 7). Although the boy’s father isn’t there to pick him up from school, he is perhaps waiting to escort him to the afterlife, which is presumably just around the corner as the story ends.

Nevertheless, the father’s absence contributes significantly to the narrator’s sense of anxiety in the final paragraphs of the work. This dynamic is especially significant in the context of the father’s other allegorical role as a God-like figure. In “cast[ing]” the boy from his home and into school, the father replicates the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise; similarly, his insistence that he isn’t “punishing” the boy in doing so is in line with the Islamic version of the story, which stresses that God had always intended for humanity to leave paradise for earth. In “Half a Day,” however, the boy experiences this transition as abandonment.

The school the narrator attends appears to be overseen by a woman he simply refers to as “the lady.” This lady welcomes the students when they arrive and advises them to adjust to their new circumstances; later, the narrator discovers that while she “would sometimes smile, she would often scowl and scold” (Paragraph 14), or even practice corporal punishment. In this sense, the lady is an extension of the school itself, which embodies the ups and downs of human life.

The boy who offers to help the narrator across the street in the story’s final lines plays a brief but important role in the work. For one, his words confirm the narrator’s now advanced age since he addresses the narrator as “Grandpa.” He also recalls the narrator as he was at the beginning of the story, underscoring the work’s interest in the human life cycle. Finally, his kindness provides a glimmer of hope in the otherwise dark tone of the work’s final paragraphs and suggests that society hasn’t disintegrated to the extent the narrator fears.