SOURCE: “Mansfield's ‘The Fly,’” in The Explicator, Vol. 17, No. 1, October, 1958, item 2.

In the following essay, Greenfield observes that the death of the fly represents the end of the boss's grief, the thing that had made him distinct from other men and nations who have moved beyond personal sadness and forgotten the cruelty of World War I.

The difficulties Miss Mansfield's excellent story “The Fly” have occasioned interpreters stem from their eagerness to make one of two obvious equations: (1) within the story itself, to see the fly symbolizing the boss (Stallman, EXP., April, 1945, III, 49; Berkman, K. M.: A Critical Study, p. 195); (2) biographically interpreting, to see the fly as K. M. herself (Jacobs, EXP., Feb. 1947, v, 32; Bledsoe, EXP., May, 1947, v, 53; Wright, EXP., Feb., 1954, XII, 27). The latest interpreter (Assad, EXP., Nov., 1955, XIV, 10) begs the question about the fly's equivalence, to the detriment of his theory about the story's meaning. If we...