SHORT STORY SERIES - The Fly by Katherine Mansfield
I have become so accustomed to short stories that I have been itching for the past two weeks to read and write one. I did go through the same old process of sieving through a lot of work, and this which I settled for did not disappoint. I have not been reading for a while now and that has been a concern for me, and this is not for lack of effort or lack of materials. Life comes at you so fast and then you abandon all you used to enjoy doing, and start trying to survive; it's dreadful.
I would be writing about another of Katherine Mansfield's works. She is one of the modernist writers, and she was friends with D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf at the time. That alone should tell you how much quality is embedded in her work. Her works were hugely impacted by the effects of world war 1. Notable of which was her brother's death from an explosion of a demonstration grenade. This piece was also featured in WW1 Literature.
- Author - Katherine Mansfield
- Title - The Fly
- Originally Published - 1922
- Genre - Grief, Short Stories
PLOT
The story is one of loss and grief. It features three chracters, one of which is only tagged as the Boss. The other character, Mr. Mansfield, is a middle-aged man who was relieved from work after he was diagnosed with a stroke. His wife and daughter keep in all couped up in the house except for only one day in each week when he is allowed to go to the city and meet his friends. On this day, Mr. Mansfield goes to meet his Boss. A conversation ensued where the Boss was telling Mr. Mansfield about his office decor and new items in the office, inferring that business has been booming. The boss offers his friend a whiskey, and he gulped it in delight as he has not been able to get any in the house. Mr. Mansfield started talking about his wife and Daughter's visit to the grave of his son in Belgium and also stated that they saw the boss's son's grave beside. This saddens the Boss as he sees his friend away and begins to weep. He noticed a fly stuck in his ink jar, instigating a series of events that causes him to plunge into more depression and then forget everything.
SETTING
The office of the boss was mentioned, and Belgium as a memory. No clear location was stated in the story.
CHARACTER(S)
The Boss - Who runs a big business hopping his only son would inherit, but losing him to the war.
Mr Mansfield - A friend and employee of the Boss
Macey - A househelp of the Boss.
The unnamed wife and daughter of Mr Mansfield
PURPOSE
We all deal with and express grief in different ways.
MY REVIEW
There is a lot to connote from this story. One thing I noticed is the way the author allows the reader to infer. Basically, readers conjure up different ideas and reasons for something. This has been one of my favorite thing about literature. I am pretty sure it is a literary device but I don't know what it is yet. The author spoke from a personal place. The story deeply connects to her personal life, and how she lost a brother to war. Like some of her work, this was also an expression of grief. Isn't that what literature is all about? Expression? One of the most notable ideas of the story was the idea of self-deception. The web of self-deception that Mr. Mansfield gets caught in is, the same as the Boss. For the Boss, it's The cycle of grief of his only son, and finding temporary solace in work, and business. Distracting himself. For Mr. Mansfield it's the hellish hum-drum of sitting in the house all day, incapacitated and unable to do what he wants or have what he craves; then relishing every single moment he gets outside. An example is a whiskey the Boss offers. Maybe not self-deception, maybe just the meaninglessness of life.
Some Notable themes in the book are Grief and morning.
THEMES
The boss grieves about his son every single time that it gets triggered by a slight reason. He wishes he was not as emotional as he was, but alas, we are emotional animals aren't we? Driven by our emotions, and primitive senses.
Another theme is that of forgetting. The Boss deals with grief by trying to forget. This was the main idea of THE FLY.
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Thanks for the awesome review. Life comes with its challenges. It could be the loss of a loved one as in the case of the Boss or a debilitating ailment as in the case of Mr. Mansfield. And as the problems are different, so the individual responses to them are different too.
That's really an interesting story line. Please I will love to have the link to get a copy.
E mail: [email protected]
You put it quite nicely bud.
With all the ills all life, we only learn to deal with it in our own personal way.
Will forward the link in a jiffy
Yes exactly.
Thanks so much. I appreciate
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