Theme Of The Fly

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Grief is the price we pay for love, and it can comes in two parts. The first is loss, and the second is the remaking of life. In Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Fly”, a man, who has built his whole business for his son only to lose him to war, feels as if he was grasping for grief and believed “he wasn 't feeling as he wanted to feel” when an old friend brings up his son’s death. It wasn 't until he notices a fly stuck in his inkpot, which the boss begins to feel something. “The Fly” depicts the theme of grief and sorrow, showing how the loss of his son has a lasting effect on the boss, however, he continues to move on from his mourning, and like how the fly slowly dies away in the end so does the boss’s grieving memories.
The protagonist …show more content…

One major effort is his continuation with his business. Ever since the boy was born, the boss slaved away, spending countless hours building up his business for his son. The son was also nearly done with his training, and was loved by the staff. When the son died and can no longer fill in his father 's shoes, the boss begins to question if the business “had no other meaning if it was not for the boy”. Yet, the boss sticks with his company and continues to makes improvements to it. This even includes his office, which he was quite pleased of after he remodeled it. “As a matter of fact he was proud of his room; he liked to have it admired”. Another example of the boss moving on was his inability to cry. It is quite possible that the boss had cried enough and was no longer feeling absolutely miserable. Before it would only take the two simple words, “My son”, for the boss to be “overcome by such grief that nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him”. Now no tears came, he could no longer feel the sorrow he was searching for. In fact, the boss “for the life of him, could not remember” what he was thinking about after the incident with the fly and the

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