‘We cling onto our last pleasures like a tree

clings on to its last leaves’

We may have survived a storm, we may be

surrounded by all kinds of troubles, the ground may
be slipping beneath our feet, no matter what
circumstances we were or are in, we always cling
onto the better side of our past like ‘ a tree clings
onto its last leaves’. We cling onto those memories
and habits of the past that we don’t want to let go of.
Here we have Mr. Woodsfield who is now old and
decrepit but sits in the boss’ office smoking a cigar in
spite of his health. The man is caged in his house for
six days of the week on account of his health. He
talks casually to the boss unaware of the effect of his
words and actions on the boss. The conversation
turns towards the boss’ late son. From this point
onwards, the boss is disturbed. After Mr.Wodefield
leaves, the boss is reminded of the pleasant days
with his son. How he had been proud of him and
everything had looked perfect. He also remembered
how he had felt when he lost him.
Life always enters a phase where the colours are
duller and everything goes numb. When the future
holds nothing for you, you tend the hold the past and
your memories closer. You get immune to even the
most heart-breaking experiences you have gone
through by going through it again and again in your
mind. Somehow you learn to push all of it to the back
of your mind with the slightest distractions of your
mind because whatever happens, life has to return to
normality. Here, the boss is prepared to cry his
sadness out, after being reminded of his son by old
Mr.Wodefield. only to find that he wasn’t feeling like
he was ‘supposed to feel’ .Instead he vents the
disturbance in his mind by diverting his attention to a
fly which had fallen into his inkpot. The boss had
seen unfair life and had had to succumb to fate. Just
when all his hard work began to be fruitful, when his
son was young and ready to take over, the war came
and took his son away along with all meaning of life
and what he had achieved in all these years
suddenly became meaningless. So he finds strange
relief in watching the fly struggle to clean itself
.When the fly had finished cleaning itself , with the
joy and relief of somebody who had survived a great
danger, the boss decides to play with it. He imagines
the fly thinking that the great danger was over,
ready for life again. The spirit of hope , energy and
determination of the fly contrasts the boss’ who had
grown numb with six sad years after his son’s death.
Life had been unfair to him. His son had been taken
away from him for no particular reason. It was sheer
play of fate or whims of the Lord.He decides to let
the fly face the same kind of unfairness. He drops ink
on the fly again. But the fly doesn’t give up. It cleans
itself again. The boss admires the fly’s courage but
tests it by dropping ink on it again. It survives that
one too, but the next drop kills it. His own coldness
disturbs him but he pushes it out of his mind. He
clears the table of the corpse and gets a new blotting
paper. By this time he had forgotten what he had
been thinking about.
The boss is trapped in the past. He ‘clings’
onto the pleasant memories of his son. But the more
he thinks about his son the more he misses him and
it becomes more painful for him.
 ‘The Fly’ is perfect example of how some
incidents in life leaves you stuck at that point of
disaster, and what emerges from it is a numb
dullness although you’ve managed to get the
‘disaster’ out of your conscious mind. It shows how
you cling to the past with its small pleasures and
sorrows. We have two examples – the boss who has
lost his son but still ‘clings’ to the memories of him,
unable to let go and get over it. and Mr.Wodefield
who ‘clings’ on to small pleasures of the past like
chatting with an old friend over a glass of whiskey
and cigar.