The Fly

(This is an essay about Katherine Mansfield's short story The Fly. I recommend you to read the story BEFORE you read my essay. You can read it here: You can read it here.)

The story introduces us different kinds of mourning. Mr Woodifield has dealed with the fact that his son is dead, has accepted it and is now able to talk about it in a common way in daily conversations. With the boss it is different. He is devastated when he hears the name of his son mentioned. It feels like he had seen the dead body of his son. He needs peace and feels a need to cry but he can't do it. After the war the boss cried and wept but now that six years has passed from his son's death he can't show his feelings anymore.
 He doesn't want to go to Belgium to see the grave of his son. Apparently it is not a question of money - he has recently had his office done, electric heating and everything - he just doesn't want or can't go there.
 The fly in the story may represent a person in the middle of a grieving process. After being soaked with ink the fly took its time and cleaned its wings carefully over and over again. It did not even know the reason why the ink was dropped: the same way people have to learn to carry on even if there is no concrete reason for their grief. Innocent people die, children get sick, life is unfair, sometimes one person has to deal with an unfair amount of desperate things in their lives. The suffering in life isn't divided evenly among people. But like it became clear in the end of the story, you have to have enough time to recover from your latest grief so that you can bear the next one.