What is the main theme of "The Fly" by Katherine Mansfield?

The main theme of "The Fly" is death.

Perhaps the darkest of Katherine Mansfield's works, "The Fly" is an existential study of the effects of senseless death upon others and their loss of will. 

On the boss's desk sits a photograph of his son, a youth taken from his father by World War I. Because the boy was buried in Belgium, the family never experienced the realism of his death. And because the boss has never fully accepted the finality of his son's death, he is quite disturbed when his former employee, Mr. Woodifield, visits and tells his old boss about his daughters' trip to Belgium. While the girls were in the cemetery in which their own brother was buried, they discovered the grave of the boss's son. 

The boss makes no comment on this revelation. Instead, he makes a trite remark on Woodifield's tale of the daughters' purchase of a pot of jam, and then he follows Woodifield out the door.

For a long moment the boss stayed, staring at nothing, while the grey-haired office messenger, watching him, dodged in and out of his cubby-hole like a dog that expects to be taken for a run. Then: 'I'll see nobody for half an hour, Macey,' said the boss. 'Understand! Nobody at all.'

Visibly shaken by the reality of his son's death, the boss sits motionless. He lived for his son to take over his business. Now he senses the existential meaninglessness of life that simply ends in death. As he looks at the photograph, it seems different from all the other times that he has glanced at it. Then, a fly falls into the boss's ink pot, and the boss lifts it out with his pen. The fly is able to clean the ink from itself and test its wings. But before it can take off, the boss puts it back into the ink pot. So the fly must begin again, and again it succeeds. But, as the agent of fate, the boss "decided this should be the last time."

The fly's death may well symbolize the death of will. Mr. Woodifield has certainly been weakened; he suffers after his stroke, and he suffers from a death of the strength and will to remember. The employee Macey has a death of will, also, as he mechanically obeys the orders of the boss. Moreover, the boss has a death of the will to feel after the loss of his son because he treats his employee without concern for the man's sensibilities.

The fly is a metaphor in this short story. I think the main theme is that grief changes us. It changes our outlook on life, and the events in our lives. When the man's son dies, it has a longstanding effect on him, metaphorically described through his murder of the fly.

One theme of this story addresses how desperate we are to maintain some semblance of control. The boss feels in control of the conversation with Woodifield, congratulating himself on his relative youthfulness despite the fact that he is actually older than his visitor, and he feels a "deep, solid satisfaction." Woodifield compliments the boss's office, the carpet, the electric heating, and the boss feels "exultant." He ordered all these changes himself. The boss even trots out his best whisky—to impress his visitor and control the interaction.

However, once Woodifield brings up their dead sons, something changes. Woodifield leaves shortly thereafter and "the boss stayed, staring at nothing." Then he attempts to cry—he "arranged to weep"—but finds he cannot. This, he cannot control. "It had been a terrible shock to him when old Woodifield sprang that remark upon him about the boy's grave." The boss's mental image of his son's grave is changed by the details Woodifield shares. He considers how he had "slaved, denied himself, kept going all those years" because he always planned for his son to succeed him in the business. "But all that was over and done with as though it never had been." He can recall the telegram that informed him that his son had been killed in the war: "He had left the office a broken man, with his life in ruins." Despite his best-laid plans and despite his son's promise and potential, the boss could not retain control, and everything fell to pieces.

In the end, he can control the fly's death. He tortures the tiny creature, simultaneously impressed by its perseverance and attracted to the fact that he has the power to make it grow weaker and more feeble. The boss could not control his son's life or his son's death, but he can control this fly's life and death. In doing so, he seems to feel as though he regains some measure of control, but then he realizes how fleeting and empty this feeling is—"a grinding feeling of wretchedness"—as it does not bring his son back. Ultimately, he can control very little, and this is a horribly uncomfortable feeling.

The central theme of this short story is death, and how it conquers all. Death is shown through the visit of Woodifield to his old friend, the boss, who have both suffered loss through the death of their sons in the war. However, at the same time, this overt reference to death is not the only way in which this theme is demonstrated. Woodifield shows through the way that his life is dominated by his daughters that he is living a kind of living death, where he is stripped of any decision-making powers himself, not even able to have a whiskey when he wants. In the same way, his struggle to remember that his daughters visited his son's grave shows that the memory Woodifield has of his son is dying as well. This is echoed in the difficulties of the boss to remember what his son looked like, and also the way in which he is demonstrates not only a lack of feeling towards his son and his son's memory, but also all of those around him. This is evinced through his treatment of Macey, who is presented as being more a dog than a servant, and also, ultimately, his treatment towards the fly. The way in which the boss torments and tortures the poor fly until it dies signifies the supremacy of death in this short story:

The last blot fell on the soaked blotting-paper, and the draggled fly lay in it and did not stir. The black legs were stuck to the body; the front legs were not to be seen.

Death rules supreme, whether it is physical death or the death of a memory or something else. Note that the boss experiences a "grinding feeling of wretchedness" when he contemplates the body of the fly, signifying his own sadness and terrible realisation of the supremacy of death. The tragedy is that this is not enough to shock him out of his living death, and to start making the most of the life that he has. It is also not enough for him to start treating those around him in a way that helps them to enjoy life either. 

In Katherine Mansfield's "The Fly," what does the fly symbolize?

The symbol of the fly is open to numerous interpretations. Some commentators have seen it as representing the brutality and cruelty of war. And there's no doubt about about it: the fly's death is most certainly cruel. The boss doesn't just kill the creature; he tortures it to death. This is his unusual way of trying to take his mind off the terrible fate that his son met on the front line in Belgium.

In killing the fly like this, the boss is inadvertently placing himself in the same position as the Germans who killed his son. Moreover, the fly's helpless struggle to free itself from the blot of ink parallels that of so many soldiers in their final moments on earth, including possibly the boss's own son.

It's rather telling, to say the least, that once he's killed the fly, the boss feels no satisfaction, but rather a grinding sense of wretchedness. This could reasonably be interpreted as a reference to the guilt experienced by many of those of the boss's generation over sending so many young men to their deaths in World War One, which at that time was the most devastating conflict in human history.

"The Fly" is a short story written by Katherine Mansfield about a man grieving for his son who died in combat during World War I. As a business owner, the old man took great pride in the fact that his son, a promising young man, would one day follow in his footsteps and take over the company. With his son's untimely death, the old man feels a lack of purpose and great sorrow for what he has lost.

After his son is brought up in a conversation, the man asks for some privacy and begins to think about his son's death. However, he becomes confused when he cannot feel the grief as intensely as he used to.

At this moment, the man notices a fly in his inkpot that is trying to escape. He saves the fly, which then begins to clean its wings and legs from the ink. Admiring the fly's efforts to survive and recover from his bad luck, the old man dips his pen in the ink and covers the fly with some more ink. Again, the fly cleans itself and recovers.

The man does this multiple times, testing the perseverance and courage of the fly with an air of cruelty. However, with its fourth attempt, the fly fails to survive and lies dead on the desk. Afterward, the man nonchalantly discards its body in a waste paper basket and continues with his day.

On the one hand, the fly in this story represents the suffering of soldiers during World War I. The fly's struggle to get out of the inkpot is emphasized and gives the creature a human quality. This can be connected to the deaths of the old man's son, as well as Woodfield's son. The following passage encourages us to feel sympathy towards the fly, who is personified:

At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen into his broad inkpot, and was trying feebly but desperately to clamber out again. Help! Help! said those struggling legs. But the sides of the inkpot were wet and slippery; it fell back again and began to swim.

The man's indifferent reaction to the death of the fly might be a comment about the general desensitization to death after an event like World War I. During this time, many people had lost a loved one in the war, which normalized the tragic deaths of young men.

Additionally, the death of the fly (caused by the cruelty of the old man) might symbolize the incompetence of war leaders during World War I and the avoidable deaths that resulted from this. The man has complete control over the life of the fly, but his incompetence and cruel attitude led to its needless death. This can be compared to the war leaders of World War I, who were accused of treating the men like "cannon fodder."

The fly had survived its first encounter with the ink, but after being repeatedly submerged, it couldn't survive, which can be compared to the fact that during World War I, men who survived in battle were forced to return and fight again. As these men fought in so many battles, their chances of death increased dramatically.

Interestingly, despite his indifference towards the fly's death, the man does have a feeling of disturbance, which is described as a "grinding feeling of wretchedness." This indicates that, even on a subconscious level, the man understood the connection between the fly and his son, or at least the cruelty in his own actions.

Finally, we can also interpret the fly and his struggle as representing the experience of grief. The fly is submerged repeatedly in the ink and is forced to recover each time, which reflects the experience of the old man himself, who must repeatedly face the tragic loss of his son. Like the fly, the boss is seemingly drowning in his feelings of loss and grief, feeling that he will never truly recover from his loss.

Who are the main characters in "The Fly" by Katherine Mansfield?

The main characters in "The Fly" by Katherine Mansfield are "the boss" and old Mr. Woodifield.

This particular story of Mansfield's is considered by many literary critics as her darkest story because it is a tale of internal crisis as well as a criticism of sending young men off to war. In this story, the fly which represents death plays a symbolic role.

The plot revolves around the visit to a friend by old Woodifield, whose name suggests the Battle of the Argonne Forest, a major battle of the First World War which lasted from September 1918, until the Armistice of 11 November 1918. In this battle, many American and European soldiers were killed because of their lack of skill and military experience. Among those who have died in this war are the sons of both Woodifield and his friend, known as "the boss." The boss, who intended for his son to take over his business, keeps a photograph of his son taken six years ago on his desk. 

After the boss gives the shaky Woodifield a drink of whiskey, he is able to remember what it is that he wishes to tell the boss:

"I thought you'd like to know. The girls [his daughters] were in Belgium last week having a look at poor Reggie's grave, and they happened to come across your boy's. They're quite near each other, it seems."

This news jars the boss into the reality of his boy's death. No longer does the son seem to his father as the young man who lies "unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever." With this image shattered, the boss sits benumbed at his desk after Woodifield departs. He decides to look at his son's photograph, but "[I]t was cold, even stern-looking," and not as he wants to remember his boy.

Dead to any emotion, the boss toys with the life of a fly who has fallen by chance into his ink pot. After putting the fly on his blotting paper, he is impressed with the fly's ability to clean the ink from itself. So, the boss cruelly replaces it in the ink pot more times so that he can watch it revive, but it finally becomes too weakened, and it dies. When this happens, "such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened."

Mr. Woodifield is a retired, older man who ventures out of his home once a week, on Tuesdays. He has had a stroke, which has presumably led to his retirement. He very much wants to remain relevant, and he enjoys visiting his friend, referred to as "the boss," who is five years older than Woodifield and is still on the job.

The boss is a proud man who enjoys showing off his office, which has been recently refurbished, to the envy of Mr. Woodifield. He and Woodifield have both lost sons in the war, and their sons are buried in Belgium.

Macey is the office messenger, and he, too, is not young. He does the bidding of the boss.

The titular character, the fly, falls into the boss's inkwell. After initially helping it by lifting it out, the boss tortures the fly by shaking ink onto it until he kills it.

The point of view of the story is third-person.

What is the main idea of "The Fly" by Katherine Mansfield?

In this story a man who has retired after a stroke goes to visit his old boss in his office. During their conversation the man mentions that his daughter had recently gone to a cemetery to visited the grave of her brother and the grave of the boss's son. Both young men had died fighting in WWI. After hearing his son mentioned, a sadness comes over the boss but he holds back his tears. Once alone again, the boss notes a fly has gotten trapped in his ink pot. He fishes it out and tortures it a bit until the fly dies.

The main idea of this story can only be understood within the historical context in which it was written. Due to advancements in technology, WWI was a massively brutal war that resulted in 18 million deaths and 23 million injuries, making it the bloodiest war in human history. The older men and women left behind lived not only with grief but with guilt. Swept up in patriotism and propaganda, most families sent their sons enthusiastically and proudly off to war, not understanding the grim reality their boys would be met with at the front lines. Therefore, the fly in the story represents the young men slaughtered in war, and the torture the man inflicts on the fly represents the blame that must be shared by everyone on the home front.