The Fly Literary Elements

Modernist short story

A city office in post-WWI Europe (implied to be England)

Third-person omniscient narrator

The first half of the story has a tone of dark humor, and the second half is deeply melancholic.

There is no clear protagonist or antagonist; the roles are occupied by different characters throughout the story. At the start, Mr. Woodifield is the protagonist, whereas the boss becomes the protagonist and the fly the antagonist in the second half of the story.

The literal conflict of the story develops in the second half: between the fly and the boss. This struggle mirrors the struggle between the boss and his grief for his son.

The story climaxes as the fly struggles to rid itself of ink for the last time, dying in the process.

Mr. Woodifield's loss of memory precedes and foreshadows the boss' loss of memory at the end of the story. The mention of the boy's photograph at the start of the story also foreshadows the story of loss that consumes the boss in the second half.

N/A

While never directly addressed, the story heavily alludes to World War I.

Mansfield employs strong sequences of imagery, with numerous metaphors and similes, to illustrate the story's themes. She describes the empty splendor of the boss' office in detail, the image of the soldiers' graves in Belgium that Mr. Woodifield holds so dear, and the tragic situation of the fly and the ink pot.

In "The Fly," the boss hopes—indeed, plans—to weep. Yet he is unable to cry or feel anything close to the level of acute grief that he expected to feel. By the end of the story, he has forgotten about his sadness altogether.

"The Fly" is laden with parallelism. The boss' son and the fly are paralleled in their ultimate death; but both the boss himself, and Mr. Woodfield, also echo the fly in their struggle for life and vigor after loss.

N/A

N/A