Nous devons faire une dissertation en analyse de texte anglais en tant que préparation à l'examen. Vous serait-il possible d'y jeter un oeil afin de corriger le style et la langue.
Merci beaucoup
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Katherine Mansfield’s The Fly tells the story of a man who is ready to collapse, the Boss. He is completely devastated, his life is ruined, but he would hardly let it show. Examining the Boss’s psychological state, the reader is quickly confronted to an important problem of which media hardly spoke, the so many families who were completely shattered by the loss of a child during the first World War.
First of all, when the Boss received the visit of his friend Woodifield, he explained to him in details all the renovations he had just done in the office: new carpet, new furniture, electric heating. But at any moment did he draw Woodifield’s attention to the photograph of his dead son standing on the table. This photograph was “not new”, standing there for six years. The fact of not drawing the attention on the photograph might have been innocent, caused by a mere distraction or by the urge of showing off with the renovated office until Woodifield mentioned his wife and daughters’ visit of the Belgian cemetery where both his son and the Boss’s are buried. Hearing these words, the Boss, who was previously cheerful, became sorrowful and disconcerted. He had bluntly been reminded of the most painful experience of his life, the loss his young son on the battlefield during the first World War.
The viewpoint on time implied by this event is really telling. The death of the only son stigmatized a lifelong failure, as the Boss had “since [his son’s] birth built up this business for him”. This hardworking life had been nullified by the country’s war effort and thus time had stopped at the very moment the Boss had received the telegram announcing the unthinkable. This is clearly shown when the Boss imagined the ground opening under him to let the corpse of his son appear “lying unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever”.
Such a story has struck more than one family all through history, and beyond the illustration it gives of how a family, and more accurately the parents may feel and perceive the deprivation of a child, it also claims the world is “fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in” . Moreover, the fact of dealing with a psychological conflict involved by the death of a son is a clear reference to Katherine Mansfield’s life, as her brother died during the war in 1915 .
Another striking element is to be found in the way the bereavement is suffered. Some people like Woodifield can, after some time, overcome grief and go out of mourning thanks to the support of the family. Whereas others, like the Boss do not want to defeat grief and believe that “time […] could make no difference”. But the Boss was wrong, he became to overcome the situation and “wasn’t feeling as he wanted to feel”, he couldn’t burst into tears simply by pronouncing the words my son as he usually did. It seems that the Boss had drowned into alcohol soon after the announcement of the Boy’s death as he qualified the Whisky he offered to Woodifield of “medicine”.
The eponymous situation occurred just after the Boss had had a look at the picture of his son in uniform, in front of an artificial cloudy landscape. In fact, the Boss noticed a fly, swimming into his inkpot, and trying to get out of its trouble. From now, as the Boss pessimistic and apparently helpless situation is clearly defined by the story, the reader can fully understand how the Boss’s frustrations and fears interacts upon the insect.
The first thing which could explain the election of this insect among the so many other existing may be that the housefly is the first insect to lay its eggs in the putrefying corpses so that the larva can feed on the flesh. This may be a possible reason justifying the selection of the animal. But it is far from being the only one. Indeed, more commonly, a fly is above all the insect swarming between spring and the late autumn in the houses, aggressing and wandering around the human beings, in a few words, a disturbing insect. But the fly can also be perceived in an allegorical way: it could express the Boss’s willing to prove to himself that he is till the boss, the master of the situation. He wanted to verify that he still had some power on things and that, however he had lost his son, he could still act and have an influence on things. Another interpretation could be, in a more phenomenological way, that he wanted to state that things couldn’t have happened in another way, that things are determined in advance without any possibility of changing them as long as something happens in the same conditions. In this case, he wanted to experience, the ineffectiveness of time.
Yet another interpretation is possible if the fly is assimilated to the son: the son would thus be reincarnated in a fly and the Boss would inflict him what the son in the flesh had been inflicted on the battlefield until it provoked his death, the dropping of the bombs. The son survived the many bombings and gunnery he had to undergo until one of these attacks provoked his death. Much evidence dissimilated in the text tends to bear out the above-mentioned interpretation: the fly seemed to cry for help as mentioned in the line “Help! Help! said those struggling legs”; moreover, after the last but one ink-dropping, the Boss called the insect “you artful little b…” where the ellipsis manifestly hide the word boy. The Boss had considered the fly’s victories over the droppings as his son’s over the bombings and it was for the father a way of having his son overcome his fatal destiny. This consideration helped the Boss who felt helpless to mourn and understand how powerless he was as for the life of his son on the battlefield.
Aside the factual interpretation of the story, a narratological overview might also be interesting. Indeed, the way the story is presented, the characters’ names and the chronology play a determinant role in the story.
The presentation and chronology give the impression that the story is centred on Woodifield, an old retired man who had been invited by his old friend and former Boss to a visit of the renovated office. Then a first hidden piece of evidence is presented and gives the way to the mention of Woodifield’s girls to the Cemetery where the sons were buried. This clue lies in the sentence qualifying the whisky of unable to “hurt a child” and being a “medicine” this line clearly illustrates the Boss’s grief about what had happened to his son during the war. Moreover, the whisky’s alcohol is the factor permitting Woodifield to remember what he wanted to tell the Boss and provokes a chain reaction forcing the boss to face the death of his son that he hid for so long in the maze of his conscience as a neurosis.
As regards the character’s names, the way they are refered to is quite sensible. For instance, it is obvious that the appellation Boss is not innocent. Another name could have been given, such as a surname or a forename, but it is likely that a common noun was selected to illustrate the Boss’s willing to be the demiurge of the word he lives in, to have a power of control on whatever surrounds him closely. The name of the son is not given either which reflects either a desire to forget about all that this name could recall to the father or an attempt of emphasis on the family relationship unifying the father with the son and predetermining the latter to take up what had been developed by the father.
The moral of the story is difficult to surround because of the so many interpretations that still divide the critics nowadays. But at the same time, the story give enough room to the readers to interpret it with their own knowledge, ideas, prejudges and experience: for some, the story might a mere sadistic fly-killing. For others, it might be a reference to the chaos theory claiming that “our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish”, i.e. that the truth and relief can sometimes occur by chance, drawing a lesson from the courage and combativeness of a fly which was ready to fight and fight again to get out of its trouble even though its relief occurs into death. In fact, it might be considered that the son became a martyr to the war’s ambitions and thus did not throw his life away. On the contrary, the son died being a hero, grasping the nettles. He died for the war without anyone being able to help him.