--Thoughts on Half a Day
Naguib Mahfouz, an Arabic author, wrote a narration titled Half a Day, which could be summarized as a story about a little boy who, having spent half a day in school, becomes an old man who can’t find his way home. What’s incredible is that all those crazy things happened in half a day. It seems that the author wants to implicate that human life is like a day in school, where one goes through four stages---orientation, adaptation, enlightenment and compromise.
The phase of orientation is like the innocent and rebelling childhood. At the very beginning, the little boy was not happy though wearing new clothes, because he was going to wave his hand to his cozy home and go to school to be trained for “a good man”; being rebelling by nature in childhood years, he was reluctant to do so. Pure and innocent, he did not even know what a school was used for. But regardless of his own likes or dislikes, it was a journey of his own. He had to face it anyway.
The phase of adaptation is like the manhood of intense activity trying awkwardly to adapt itself to the mature society. In this phase, the little boy, on the one hand, played “all sorts of games”, making many friends and fell in love with those people around him, playing and learning, which gave him the feeling of happiness and sweetness; on the other hand, by tasting the pain and hatred brought by rivalries giving rise to fighting, the lady’s yelling and scolding, the frustration of physical punishment, he had slowly realized life is not all about delights but misgivings as well.
The phase of enlightenment is like the middle age, where one profits from his former experience, learning more about society and human nature. When “the time for changing one’s mind was over and gone”, there is a slight easing of tension for him, a mellowing of character like the ripening of the fruit and the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more sophisticated and more mature view of life. He got to know that one needs to devote great effort to taking advantages of opportunities and strive for being successful and happy.
The phase of compromise is like the old age. At the end of the day, having found his security and contentment, the boy was not feeling repulsive and alienable as he was at the very thought of school. He had overcome the conflicts and reached his final resolution, just like what one does in his later years, eventually accepting the internal circles of the growth and decay of human life peacefully.
And then, the day of school is over, a little boy turning into an old man, with his life nearly coming to an end after a long series of profoundly meaningful and wonderful ups and downs, turns and twists, victories and vicissitudes, and loves and laments. Taking this biological view of life, no one can deny that life is like a day in school.
