Katherine Mansfield The Fly Analysis

The Guilt of a Victim

Some of the most disturbing truths are told in silent whispers masked in the noise of living. You aren 't aware that you heard the message until long after it has seeped into you subconscious and taken root in your psyche. This is an art in storytelling, an art so few can recognize, and even fewer can replicate. Such beautiful craftsmanship is Katherine Mansfield 's story of “The Fly,” in which, behind the scenes, a dismal message of grief and guilt and the limits of the human mind are told through two dying men and one dying fly. At the point that the story begins, the hardest part for the Boss about his son 's death is that he no longer feels the same sort of grief he used to. He once told someone that “time... could make no difference.” But even when the body is overwhelmed with sorrow, it can only last so long (at least in it 's physical manifestation.) And so the Boss 's grief has changed over the years, and even though the very thought of his son is no less painful than it was when

Like the Boss finding himself caught in a soul-sucking pit of anguish, the fly becomes stuck in a pot of black ink that it cannot escape from. After being freed, the fly is “ready for life again.” But Boss, inspired by the fly 's perseverance, can 't resist throwing a blot of ink on the fly, just to see how it will react. During the next few minutes, the Boss inadvertently kills the fly. While not a perfect parallel, this action does seem to suggest a connection to the Boss 's own condition. Whenever Boss reaches the point of moving on, of “taking the helm” and “going strong”, he remembers his son and throws himself back into the inky blackness of despair. And like the drowning fly, Boss can only take so much of