Published Paper Details:

Katherine Mansfield's "The Fly" (1922) remains one of the most psychologically nuanced explorations of grief and mortality in modernist fiction. Beneath its seemingly trivial narrative--a businessman torturing a fly caught in ink--lies a complex allegory of human suffering, repression, and the inevitability of death. This paper interprets the fly as a central symbol through which Mansfield articulates the fragility of life and the persistence of psychological trauma. The boss's manipulation of the fly mirrors his unconscious struggle to confront the loss of his son in World War I, transforming an act of cruelty into an externalization of internal conflict.Drawing on psychoanalytic, existential, and modernist approaches, the study demonstrates how Mansfield translates private grief into universal symbolism. The fly's futile attempts to survive, the boss's mechanical gestures, and the sterile office setting together reveal the desensitization of a post-war generation and the moral void left by modern industrial civilization. Mansfield's minimalist technique--her controlled diction, silences, and irony--renders the story both emotionally restrained and symbolically profound.By situating "The Fly" within the psychological and historical contexts of early twentieth-century trauma, this paper argues that the story's true power lies in its transformation of everyday detail into a meditation on mortality and existential despair. The fly emerges not merely as a victim but as a mirror of human endurance and futility--an image of man's perpetual struggle against decay, time, and the emptiness of remembrance.