The Fly

by Katherine Mansfield

“The Fly,” written in February 1922, primarily concerns the loss of a young British soldier in World War I and the effects of his death on his father. The story was published the following month in The Nation and Athenaeum. In 1923, after Mansfield’s death at 34, “The Fly” was published in The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories, a collection of her most recent short stories. Born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1888, Katherine Mansfield moved to England at the age of 19 to pursue a career as a writer. Writing literary sketches led to crafting remarkable short stories, for which she is best known. Noted for their compression and understatement in examining complex emotions and developing profound themes, Mansfield’s short stories greatly influenced the shape of the short story in 20th-century literature.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, School, Read For School, Literary Fiction, Academic

5 pages

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including "Miss Brill", "Prelude", "The Garden Party", "The Doll's House", and later works such as "The Fly", are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.

Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.

Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.

Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.

Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.

Reviews

[Loretta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple short story filled with great sadness. Extremely well written. Thanks to my Goodreads friend, walkingfortheloveofbooks for the recommendation. 😊

[Pauline Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was listening to this as an audio book off you tube, it's extremely good,very descriptive. It was only 15 minutes long, but took the boredom off my day and made me think you can write about anything.

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

La mosca, Katherine Mansfield.
Relectura Top 10 mejores cuentos 4/10 (no siguen orden)

Complicado hacer un diagnóstico de este relato breve que nos hace tres cambios de dirección en muy poco recorrido. Katherine Mansfield nos pone en un camino, para a continuación pegar dos volantazos que nos hacen dudar de las intenciones de la autora. Eso es lo mejor de este relato breve clásico, la capacidad para hacerte reflexionar al lector temporalmente, para ir sacándote de las historias y meterte en otras, a veces tan absurdas como la del final.
 
Aquí está presente la guerra y como afecta a las relaciones familiares y amistades y en especial, el dolor por las ausencias que la guerra trae. Y más importante todavía, como voltea una vida, unas expectativas y unos intereses la pérdida como consecuencia de la guerra. También creo que habla de lo complejo de los hombres de ese momento histórico y la imposibilidad para asimilar lo terrible del momento, o dicho de otra forma, la impasibilidad y lo complejo de aproximarse humanamente a esa tragedia. 
 
Creo que también nos trata de poner de relieve el egoísmo propio de la vejez, cuyo interés radica únicamente en ellos mismos, cada uno de los protagonistas tiene un rol, pero ambos ajenos a nada que no sea su propia vanidad, achaques y en definitiva sus propias necesidades y miserias.
 
Esa mosca final del relato, creo que es punto justo que nos da la clave de hasta que punto deja de ser importante nada para un hombre anciano, en especial todo aquello que no sea su propia supervivencia.

[Janete on hiatus due health issues · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fly...

Mansfield wrote the story in February 1922 at the Victoria Palace Hotel in Montparnasse, Paris. It was first published in the The Nation and Athenaeum on 18 March 1922 and in the The Doves' Nest and Other Stories in 1923.

The story relates to the death of a soldier in World War I. In October 1915, Mansfield's younger brother, Leslie Beauchamp, was killed during a grenade training drill while serving with the British Expeditionary Force in Ypres Salient, Belgium. He was 21. Like the soldier in the story, before enlisting Leslie had worked for his father's firm. Leslie and Mansfield's father Harold Beauchamp owned an importing company.

Major themes:
War
Grief
Loss

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

He doesn't want to remember: six years ago, the death of his only son, his grave somewhere in the battlefields of Belgium, during the Great War.


But then, inadvertently, a friend reminds him, tells him both their dead sons graves are near each other, in Belgium, flowers growing on the ground over them.


The memory of his greatest loss comes back to him. He braces himself--expects and wishes even--for that familiar, unbearable sorrow he thinks will remain forever. But it doesn't come. He then sees a fly, struggling to get out of his broad inkpot. He watches it succeed in clambering out of the dark ink and prepares itself to live its second life.


What he did to the fly, what he felt, and what he could no longer remember. ..

[Rachel Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what my emotions are doing after reading "The Fly." It's such a short story, and a simple one, that of a father grieving the loss of his child in World War I — but the ending, where the titular fly comes in, is what threw me off balance. At the very least, the story explains complex human emotions and proves that it's never easy to simplify what's going through your mind at any given point.

It's a story of two men, one who is at the end of his life, the other who has forgotten about the end of his son's life in the war for many years. The grieving father has forgotten his sorrow until he is reminded of it, and needs a few moments in his office by himself, only some ink and a fly to distract him. The ending is obviously quite symbolic, the ink being grief and resistance to moving forward after his son's death; the old man also of course serving as the agent to bring all of those feelings back up again. It's a simple story, but there is so much depth behind it that it makes "The Fly" a quick and touching read.

[Matt Cowens · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fly is a tale of loss, of loss of feeling, and of cruelty and hope. It's a beautifully written story which deals with growing old, the end of a dynasty, the aftermath of the Great War and the way mettle can be tested by challenges - admirably at times, destructively at others.

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve arranged my takeaway thoughts into a haiku:

“Pummeled by hardship,
We rally a little less
Each time we get up."

[Mark André · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. One of her best. A must read. For adults

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is a short story?

1> Edgar Allan Poe, one of the finest story writers, adequately characterised the form as, “a prose-narrative requiring from half an hour to one or two hours for its perusal”. It is thus that layout which can be read at a solitary sitting.

2> Succinctness is accordingly the quintessence of a short story which is an indispensable obligation in this age of dash and scurry, restiveness and mobility. Yet, conciseness is not the lone trait of a short story which has certain other features as a narrative of some incidents.

3> It is a straightforward narrative in a single situation and produces a lone impression, for this is the essential element of every work of art. The singleness of the situation and the singleness of the effect produced mark the features of a good short story, although it may contain different incidents or moments. What is required is the concentration of the interest, the absolute relevance of details and the singleness of impression.

4> As a part of narrative, the short story has a plot which, however, has the indispensable accord or synchronization. The unity of the plot rises from the singleness of the situation in which the exposition, the development and the climax are all synthesised, and brought into an arranged whole.

5>A short story, because of its limited range and scope, seldom has any detailed characterisation. The paucity of characters and the special focus on some specific traits of a character constitute too, the, incidental features of a good short story. Of course, characterisation is an important feature in a short story, as in any other literary form.

6> Lastly, the short story, because of its essential brevity, can hardly indulge in a play of rhetoric or diction. Any elaboration in description or detail or any long speech or dialogue hardly suits the limited range of a short story. A simple style, a direct approach and a clean appeal, in fact, make a short story perfect as a specimen of literary art.

The Fly is characterised as one of the finest short stories ever written. The tale represents the classical art of storytelling in brevity and suggestiveness, with the character-portraits of a novel.

In effect, The Fly is a matchless sampling of the psychological short story of modern times, which is based on the hard reality in the life of an individual. It remains, at the same time tempting in its universality as also in its depiction of individual psychology.

A short story, as asserted already, has a very brief plot. The Fly is very brief, complete in five pages only. Of course, its brevity appears illusive, for, though the story is short, the matter is complex and liable to be interpreted differently and symbolically.

The story mainly presents the mental state of a big business man who is deeply distressed by the untimely death of his only son, some six years ago.

Mr. Woodifield, one of his close associates, stirs the memory of his dead son. "and he is found involved, in a state of mental desperation, in a little episode of a fly, and he ultimately causes its cruel death.

The plot of the story is apparently simple and single, although there are in fact two episodes --- the Woodifield episode and the fly episode.

Both the episodes, conversely, never seem quite apart from each other and they are amalgamated through the character of the boss who is the hero of the story. Both these episodes essentially are used to represent the psychology of a bereaved, rather wretched, father.

As noted already, the plot of the story is unrefined, slickly passing from the exposition to the development and then to the climax. Woodifield's talk that intensifies the grief-stricken heart of the father, serves as the exposition which is developed as the bereaved man recalls his dead son and muses on his own dependence on him.

The climax comes with the fly episode, which follows from the sorrow of the father's heart at the memory of his dead son. The unity of the plot is wonderfully maintained by the storyteller with a perfect synthesis between the exposition, the development, and the climax, although the subject of the story is intricate enough. The entirety of the whole story is well preserved, with the beginning, the middle, and the end in a perfectly symmetrical order.

A short story as known already, has a few characters. This is because of extremely short span. The present story contains only two prominent personalities-Mr. Woodifield and the boss. None of them is fully sketched, yet their inner aspects are well brought out. The psychology, particularly of the boss, is immensely interesting, and the story seems to have the character of what is called the stream of consciousness novel.

Of course, the old attendant Macey is another character. However, he is merely sketchy, and not a full-length figure.

The economy of the mode of story-telling is perceived all through. Because of the essential brevity of her story, Katherine Mansfield is found to use really succinct expressions and draw clear-cut images to convey her tale aptly. The intact reflection of the boss, after hearing from Woodifield of his son's grave, is nimbly brought out in a few paragraphs.

His psychology, with its obscurity, is presented notably, yet specifically and in brief.

Again, the mottled facets of the fly episode, with its dramatic turns, are, too, temporarily related. A good short story is an art, and this can be flawlessly told about this short story. The story leaves behind the inkling of an artistically delineated picture of the inner world of an apparently stable man. It has certainly a tragic note, but this is inventively presented without anything of a melodrama or sentimentalism.

The death of the fly is a quite commonplace affair, but this has a serious implication for the boss. Its reaction on him is subtly signified. The tragic note of the story has a universal significance, and this makes the final impression so deep and penetrative.

The storyteller well handles the psychology of the bereaved father. She indicates how old Woodifield's remark about the boy's grave quite upset him. In his mind's eye, the staggered father seemed to see his beloved boy lying quietly in his grave - "It was exactly as though the earth had opened and he had seen the boy lying there with Woodifield's girls staring down at him."

The stream-of-consciousness is found to flow strongly in him.

The fly episode, however, particularly reveals the inner current of the hero's mind. He was in a state of desolation, and felt his utter nakedness at the hand of a mean pitiless destiny. That realization came to the surface from his deep interior, as he saw the plight of the fly.

He began to test, rather viciously, the endurance of the little fly, and that was plainly the revelation of his mental shakeup in addition to disconsolation. He impliedly put himself into the position of the fly and began to test the range of the struggle against the cruelty of destiny.

The entire fly episode is an artistic idiom of the psychology of anxiety of the hero, the boss, and his abortive endeavour to establish his stamina of endurance

The conclusion of the story emphasizes further this mental state of the boss. The little fly expired, and the boss was thoroughly exasperated after witnessing its struggle and helpless death. He felt positively frightened and was seized with a 'grinding feeling of wretchedness'. His mind was turned on its head, for the death of the fly was a sharp pointer to his own bitter pang of life.

He was made conscious of his downright vulnerability. He seemed to lose his sense of reality. There was mental void, so delicately suggested by the writer --- 'What was it? It was .....'

The catastrophic note here is intensely poignant, though this is not made overt.

In the decisive analysis, ‘The Fly’ stands out as a matchless specimen in the realm of the short story, satisfying perfectly all the essentials of a first-rate short story.

[RM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. I interpret the ending to mean that the boss is as careless with life (exemplified by his torture and killing of the fly) as politicians/generals are with sending young men off to war to be brutally killed. Although the boss seems to believe that he misses his selfless son because of the person his son was, it seems that the truth is more selfish: his son was to take the boss's place at his company and continue his legacy. Before torturing the fly, the boss was thinking of his son. After the fly dies, the boss cannot remember what he was thinking of.

[Karenina (Nina Ruthström) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Förtränga och avleda sina känslor av sorg med hjälp av konsumtion, whiskey eller genom att plåga ihjäl en fluga kanske fungerar på kort sikt men hur blir det i längden...?

Om förmannen läses som Gud (ödet, livet) och flugan som människan menar kanske Mansfield att vi kan överleva ett visst antal motgångar om vi har rätta andan, men vi klarar inte inte hur många och stora bläckdroppar som helst.

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fly, by Katherine Mansfield, is a short story written about an aged man who struggles with finding meaning with his life after the loss of his only son. This story can be re-read over and over again each with its own different interpretation. Having your own interpretation of a story reflects what you see in a story. Granted, creating an interpretation for every story does not work, however in this case it does.

The Fly is an allegory describing the relationship between God and man. In the story we see three main characters: Mr. Woodifield, the boss, and the fly. The story begins with both of the men reclining in the boss’s newly furnished office. In an attempt to make conversation, Mr. Woodifield told the boss all about his daughter’s visit to a cemetery the past week. He explained that the graves were all kept tidy and decorated ornately, even the grave of the boss’s son was decorated with flowers. On hearing the news, the boss was filled with grief. He bottled it up until Mr. Woodifield had left his quarters. After struggling to find a way to lament he notices a fly stuck in his inkwell. He plucked the fly out and began to watch it clean the ink off. The boss, impressed by the fly’s perseverance, dropped another blot of ink on top of the fly. The fly began to work harder, cleaning itself even more than before. Just when it finished up another blot of ink would hit it. The boss found the cycle to be amusing and repeatedly dropped blobs of ink on the fly.The fly eventually drowned in the thick puddle of ink. The boss felt remorse for the fly. As he disposed of the carcass he sat back down and forgot all about it. As if nothing ever happened.

This story is about God messing in the affairs of human life. The god figure is represented by the boss and the mere human, the fly. We begin the story by finding God in a lush state, a place of comfort and luxury. He takes pride in it too, for what god does not like the glory? However, his mood turns sour when he is reminded about his son’s death. the upset god tries to find ways to cope and that is when he saw the fly trapped in his inkwell. Curious with the fly, he rescued it from its likely death and began watching it. We, as the fly, struggle in life. God helps us out and saves us in times of need. But once we are “saved” are we really saved?
Life’s problems are like ink blots that continually fall on our wings and prevents us from taking off. Once we work off all of our problems something hits us on the back of our head. Sometimes it feels like God sets us up to fail and ultimately drowns us in troubles. And the only way out is to just give up. For God truly does not care since we are just a fly caught in the world’s web.

[Gillyz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very meaningful story.
The fly might symbolize the dead son or soldiers who died in the war, or represent "the boss" himself, struggling to survive after having lost his son.

[rebecka ₊✩‧₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧₊ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75
Noveller är svåra. De är så korta så jag hinner inte känna något, dock allt är denna sorglig. Mr. Woodifield är nedstämd, han har förlorat en son i andra världskriget (ett återkommande tema i alla noveller tydligen). Han har även fått en stroke som han läker från.
Hans chef är betydligt mer överklass och vi träffar han dricka en fin flaska whiskey, han har även förlorat en son till kriget. Den korta novellen hinner reflektera mycket om sorg och att läka. Sedan kommer den annorlunda delen, vi får en flugas perspektiv också. Flugan dör i bläck på grund av chefen, flugan fastnade i bläcket men lyckades torka av sig själv och var redo att fly när chefen tog pennan och lade bläck på flugan ännu en gång, och flugan accepterar sitt öde och dör. Precis som soldater i krig, som deras båda söner gjorde för 6 år sedan.

[Berit Lundqvist · Rating 2 out of 5]

One and a half star rounded up.

A very short book about an old, and increasingly senile, man who is at loss over his son’s death in the war. This unfortunate state of mind makes him torture and kill a fly. End of story.

Okaaay. Another what-the-fuck-did-I-just-read experience. It’s all about gaining control, by kicking someone down the ladder, I guess. But I’m not sure.

[J A · Rating 1 out of 5]

A man slowing drowning a fly in ink. Yay. I was forced to read this by a teacher who didn't believe anything with a happy ending could be considered good literature.

[Lannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Katherine Mansfield knew grief and loss well, and this is another one of her ways of expressing it. What I took from it was something like this: great loss can manifest itself into cruelty.

[Sneh Pradhan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I Love Katherine Mansfield , but this short story is just too boringly and insipidly written, as if with no traces of inspiration ... Something that Mansfield could have done only to meet some last minute deadline or as a chore possibly , and so does not , in me, evoke any compassion or sympathy for the character of the boss . Well , the guy is going through an excruciating pain inside , but it makes no sense to perform sadistic experiments on an innocent bystander fly to comprehend your own soul . That's just downright cruel , and has no beauty to it , at all !!

[Anne Oftedahl · Rating 1 out of 5]

....what the actual fuck?

Read for my Fictional Writing course

[Cookie's Comforts · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok so i listened to this twice via YouTube. The only thing I got from it was - Life is a test !

[Mommy's lil gal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love katherine Mansfield's short stories a lot. This one was deftly written which extracts deep meaning but I didn't like the killing of innocent fly.

[Sohail · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful story about resilience, and how it cannot last forever. I felt the second part of the story was rushed. Better pacing near the end would have done wonders to it.

[Lauren Gallina · Rating 4 out of 5]

such a sad little story, I can't wait to read more from her, it feels like an exciting entry to what she can do

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[mika · Rating 4 out of 5]

that was so weird but in a good way

[Ami 乁⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠o⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠ㄏ (written by Jane Austen) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another very short read but this one was a bit more compelling than the last.

[Abbie O'Hara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short but powerful examination of grief and the heavy weight of resilience

[jazzmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this short story for my drama class. When I first read it, it was hard to understand. After annotating and rereading the story, I appreciated the perspective the author was coming from and how the characters especially the boss displayed their emotions.

[Arjay · Rating 3 out of 5]

"He wasn't feeling as he wanted to feel."

A poignant tale focusing on the several mixed emotions that come with the loss of a loved one in war. The writing style wasn't too appealing, and if anything the biggest redeeming factor was the unexpected connection I made to the main character's interaction with the fly near the end.

It's shocking how reminiscent I find the latter half of the story with the fly to be. What he thinks and how he feels as he blots the poor bugger, it's strikingly similar to my own thought process during an experience I had back home.

I used to be terrified of any sort of potential contact with bugs, and refused to simply squash them with my shoe or a piece of tissue. To be sure, an ant was crawling about on the bathroom floor, and I ended up "blotting" it with tap water, much like he does to the fly with ink. A single drop, and I would wait until it emerged from the pool that had formed before adding another to increase the size of the soon-to-be lake.

Just like him, I felt mixed emotions, of admiration (and disgust), and conflicting inclinations towards mercy and cruelty.

Funny how such tiny things can contribute to the brewing of grandiose thoughts.