SOURCE: “‘The Fly’ Rescued” and “The Anatomy of a Fly” in College English, Vol. 22, No. 8, May, 1961, pp. 585-86.

In the following two-part essay, Oleson takes issue with Thomas's interpretations of the symbolism in “The Fly”; Thomas replies to Oleson's criticism and offers direction for further criticism of the story.

In “Symbol and Parallelism in ‘The Fly’” (College English, Jan. 1961), J. D. Thomas suggests that the fly in Katherine Mansfield's story represents “a life force—or The Life Force—fighting with instinctive courage for survival, until finally done to death by human perversity” and that the ink with which the fly is destroyed stands for a particular kind of grief identified with Woodifield and equated with a “black Slough of Despond” (p. 261). The fly episode and Mr. Woodifield's visit, taken together, dramatize the boss's rejection of suicide and escape from despondency (p. 262).

Such an interpretation seems to me to...