Frank Foley
Frank Foley
THE FLY
Mansfield, Katherine
Published: 1923
Category: Short Story
Themes: youth, age, and death, memory and reality, power, war
Overview
From the collection, The Dove's Nest, published in 1923, The Fly is a powerful story of power, paternal pride, and indifference to life - with a strong nod to World War I.
Frank's highlight!
The boss's instant transition from unbearable memories of his dead son to total focus on the struggling fly. Mansfield fully nails this at the end of the story, with the fly now dead, and the boss unable to recall what he was thinking about.
Life-affirming / uplifting message
Well, it's tough to find something uplifting in the presented scene of this story. But, in a way, the story itself is a kind of holding to account, through its own realistic depiction. That this story stays with us long after we've read it, is testament to that.
Life wisdom
Our potential blindness to our mistreatment of others - No doubt with reference to the first world war generals who sent millions of young soldiers to their deaths for no strategic advantage, Mansfield seems to represent the boss as someone so wrapped in his own hubris and ego, that he cannot see his own failings as a father. That his treatment of the fly is cruel torture of a living creature is totally lost on him.
A Personal Note
As with many of my favourite stories this one was discovered in a University of Kent library browsing session. I'd read Mansfield at that point - Bliss, The Garden Party, The Doll's House, etc., - but The Fly was a different kind of story and something of a surprise to me. It's a simple story and there's a coldness to it, but it never quite disappears from my memory!
Quoted passages
QUOTE: 'His boy was an only son. Ever since his birth the boss had worked at building up this business for him; it had no other meaning if it was not for the boy. Life itself had come to have no other meaning. How on earth could he have slaved, denied himself, kept going all those years without the promise forever before him of the boy's stepping into his shoes and carrying on where he left off?
And that promise had been so near being fulfilled. The boy had been in the office learning the ropes for a year before the war. Every morning they had started off together; they had come back by the same train. And what congratulations had he received as the boy’s father! No wonder; he had taken to it marvellously. As to his popularity with the staff, every man jack of them down to old Macey couldn’t make enough of the boy. And he wasn’t in the least spoilt. No, he was just his bright natural self, with the right word for everybody, with that boyish look and his habit of saying, “Simply splendid!”’