The Destructive Coping Methods In The Fly By Katherine Mansfield

“The Fly” a story by Katherine Mansfield in 1922 more than six years after the death of her younger brother, his death lead to the writing of the short story “The Fly." In “The Fly” the boss starts to act differently after losing his son in World War one. After the six years of mourning the boss seems to be moving on, but he is doing so in three destructive coping methods, one including the torture of the fly.
There comes a time in everyone’s lives where you have to move on. The boss at first did not believe that fact due to the attempt at crying after saying, “’My son!’” and no tears came to his eyes. The boss attempting to make himself cry shows he does not want to move on, but to his belief he is moving on. The boss did show signs of moving on including the newly designed room with a” bright red carpet with a pattern of large …show more content…
In the midst of looking at his son’s photo “the boss noticed that a fly had fallen into his broad inkpot.” The boss like the fly fell into a dark abyss that he could not control, the fly’s abyss being the ink and the boss’s abyss was his son’s death. Noticing the fly the boss gets an idea to test the fly and see how long the fly can last. The narrator says, “The little beggar seemed absolutely cowed, stunned, and afraid to move because of what would happen next.” This testing of the fly’s will and stamina to the torture was a representation of what the boss went through during the six years. The longer the fly lasted the more the boss would test the creature by placing more ink blots then “he actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to help the drying process.” The boss’s brilliant notion was the end of the fly causing the will and strength to live of the poor fly to be nonexistent. Soon after the fly was disposed of the boss’s grief and pain disappeared since, “For the life of him he could not remember,” any of the pain he felt minutes