How does Naguib Mahfouz use imagery in Half a Day?

The little boy's apprehension about being taken to school is conveyed with language that evokes imagery of punishment, confinement, military discipline, and industrial labor. His anxiety is initially expressed through a description of the first day of school as "the day on which I was to be cast into school for the first time." The phrasing to "cast" something away is more often used to describe the shedding or throwing out of something undesirable. The narrator thus feels that his parents are treating him as an undesirable person whom they wish to "cast" into the school in order to rid themselves of him.