ipl-logo

Naguib Mahfouz's Half A Day

968 Words4 Pages

Naguib Mahfouz True Colors Shown through his Novels “Events at home, at work, in the streets - these are bases for a story” (“Naguib Mahfouz Quotes”). Naguib Mahfouz said these wise words in regards to his owns writings. Naguib Mahfouz’s life experiences greatly impacted his works of literature. Facing many different conflicts growing up in Cairo Egypt due to religious, political, and economical issues throughout his homeland. Although some individuals did not fancy his writings because of the truthfulness of them, the ones who adore them believe his stories have made a worldwide impact. Mahfouz’s background appears in all of his writings, especially the poem Half a day and the books Children of Gebelawi, Thebes at War, and The Cairo Trilogy. …show more content…

The writing starts out with a youthful boy going to his first day of school, throughout the book he completes large memorable milestones of life without stopping to think about them, by the time he returns back home everything has changed tremendously. “Good lord! Where was the street lined with garden? Where has is disappeared to? When did all these vehicles invade it?”(Mahfouz 87). This is an excerpt from the short story of Half a Day, it talks about how much his city has been transformed into something he was not expecting. The excerpt explains how Naguib felt about how his home town was changing so much and becoming a completely new place, from old-fashioned to modern. “I could only see tall buildings and hordes of people”(Mahfouz 87). The quote that is mentioned shows that Mahfouz is not impressed of amused with the amount of new people coming into his hometown. “How did these hill of refuse come to cover its’ sides”(Mahfouz 87). Refuse is trash that covers a vast part of the streets, Mahfouz was not accustomed to seeing the trash all over the place. Half a Day depicts exactly how Mahfouz felt about his hometown becoming more

Show More
Related

Summary Of Sunrise Over Fallujah By Walter Dean Myers

820 Words | 4 Pages

Although he was very thankful for her kindness, he could not thank her, for he knew he was going to have to drop out again to help out at home. At the age of sixteen, Myers had dropped out of school again and joined a gang. He got into all kinds of trouble, and although he didn’t like it, he continued to do bad things until his parents sent him off into the army at the age of seventeen. The army, his awful home life, tons of research, and his love for writing literature inspired him to write this novel. Sunrise Over Fallujah contains many exciting elements and draws the reader in, however it can be found boring at some times.

Read More

Permanent Red By Ryan Caraveo Analysis

1094 Words | 5 Pages

The book follows a boy who was thrown into war in which he is primarily focused on avenging his family after hearing their final screams. Ishmael Beah and the song “Permanent Red” demonstrate how their anger brainwashed them and became the root of their actions. They both rely on anger and other things such as drugs to escape from other emotions rather than facing

Read More

Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

1585 Words | 7 Pages

Most people live a relatively normal day to day life even if we may have our share of mundane problems. If we are asked to describe our emotions, at the very least we can say happy or sad or fine. When we truly love something or take great pleasure in something, most of us tend to wax poetically. In contrast, there are people like Ishmael Beah whose lives started off quite normal but then it took a major wrong turn. From the tender age of ten years, Beah witnessed the horrors of war in his home country, Sierra Leone.

Read More

Conflict In The Hatchet

813 Words | 4 Pages

The book Hatchet was full of adventure around every corner. There is not a moment in the entire book where you’re not held in suspense or on the edge of your seat wonder what might happen to Brian, the main character. It is a book about both a self conflict, and a battle against nature for the survival of the fittest. This story starts off holding you in suspense, Brian is a city boy that is going through a hard time because he knows “The Secret” that his dad doesn’t know, so it’s causing a divorce. Now you want to know what the secret is and how it managed to cause an entire divorce.

Read More

Apush Dbq Industrial Revolution

1276 Words | 6 Pages

There were rats and garbage in apartments and each apartment housed an entire family. Sewage and garbage accumulated so much because there was no plumbing, so waste was dumped into streets and rivers. “The slums . . . [have] streets [that] are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse . .

Read More

Johnny Tremain Thesis

1111 Words | 5 Pages

Many people also feel that this book is irrelevant to student’s lives. However, kids should learn what life would be like for kids at their age in a different time period. Like what was stated before, in a history class, when we learn about the history, we learn about the straight facts, not as much of the personal lives of people living in that time. Since the novel is showing the personal recollections of one boy in the time period, students can identify the similarities between the two lessons. Since the similarities will be present, the students could make connections to both of the

Read More

A Long Way Gone

571 Words | 3 Pages

The author uses a lot of imagery, symbol, and builds a connection with the readers. In the country Sierra Leone, a war broke out in 1993 where the rebel turns against the government. The main character, Ishmael Beah, at age 12, face his hardest situation that took away his childhood. He has to find safety and his lost family.

Read More

Examples Of Conflicts In The Kite Runner

1128 Words | 5 Pages

The main character had to manage his father’s neglect while growing up. All Amir really wants is to be “looked at, not seen, listened to, not heard” (Hosseini 65), and while this conflict shapes the way that Amir grew up, readers are exposed to the

Read More

Literary Techniques Used In Philip Larkin's Essay 'Here'

601 Words | 3 Pages

His attitude toward the city is displeasure. This can be understood through the imagery used to describe the town. Through this literary device, the speaker describes the elements of the town in great detail, and he makes known what elements he dislikes. The speaker portrays the town as having “grain scattered streets” and “barge crowded water.” These two descriptions are given with a negative tone, and they imply the negative attributes of the city.

Read More

The Neo-Marxist Criticism In James Joyce's Araby

1102 Words | 5 Pages

In October 1905, James Joyce wrote “Araby” on an unnamed narrator and like his other stories, they are all centered in an epiphany, concerned with forms of failures that result in realizations and disappointments. The importance of the time of this publication is due to the rise of modernist movement, emanating from skepticism and discontent of capitalism, urging writers like Joyce to portray their understanding of the world and human nature. With that being said, Joyce reflects Marxist ideals through the Catholic Church’s supremacy, as well as the characters’ symbolic characterization of the social structure; by the same token, psychoanalysis of the boy’s psychological and physical transition from one place, or state of being, to another is

Read More

Theme Of Innocence In The Kite Runner

725 Words | 3 Pages

In most coming-of-age novels, authors define childhood as the period of rose-colored glasses and complete innocence that comes to an end with a sudden profound revelation of reality; however, in Hassan, Amir, and Sohrab’s childhoods that was not the case. Their innocence was stolen from them; their rose-colored glasses shattered. The loss of the rose-colored glasses forces Amir, Hassan, and Sohrab to see reality before they could have a profound revelation and fully understand the harsh realities of life; they come of age and lose their innocence at far too young an age. Throughout the coming-of-age novel, The Kite Runner, loss of innocence is a very common theme made apparent via Amir, Hassan, and Sohrab; the theme, loss of childhood innocence, shapes the novel by introducing the themes of betrayal and redemption. Hassan’s loss of innocence assists in shaping the novel because when Hassan loses his childhood innocence, the novel’s protagonist, Amir, loses his childhood innocence as well.

Read More

Summary Of Jorge Luis Borges's 'The Aleph'

1828 Words | 8 Pages

In The Aleph, Jorge Luis Borges tells the story of Carlos Argentino Daneri, a mediocre poet on a quest to create a masterpiece- a poem that describes in detail all the places in the world. Upon receiving the news that his house will be demolished, Daneri is enraged. He confesses to the narrator that he needs the house to finish his poem, as the ceiling contains an Aleph, i.e. a point in space that contains all other points and he has been using it as an aide for his writing. The story ends with the narrator experiencing for himself the Aleph but refusing to acknowledge its existence to Daneri.

Read More

Analysis Of Mahfouz's Arabian Nights And Days

748 Words | 3 Pages

Mahfouz, as well as Said, shared a direct contact with the Arabian lifestyle because they grow up in that society. Mahfouz’s novel depicts the real world with the touches of the supernatural and mystic, but as a form of evil in the world not as exotic and uncivilized as the Europeans did. Mahfouz’s Arabian Nights and Days “takes new depths and insights as it picks up from where the ancient story ends” (Fayez 229). Mahfouz uses the Arabian Nights tales and Shahryar’s and Scheherazade’s society to portray the contemporary social and political issues of his people. Mahfouz aims to show various thematic concerns of the people of the East than the early versions left out.

Read More

I Saw Ramallah Analysis

1909 Words | 8 Pages

The Egyptian novelist, Ahdaf Soueif, translated the book into English. Edward Said wrote a foreword for this literary work rating it as one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement that we now have (Said,

Read More

Sello Duiker: A Literary Analysis

1811 Words | 8 Pages

With the novel being read from a ‘twelve’ year old whose history motivates his understanding, perception and interpretation of the events he encounters and interprets to the reader,

Read More

More about Naguib Mahfouz's Half A Day

Related Topics

Open Document