But he did not draw old Woodifield's attention to the photograph over the table of a grave-looking boy in uniform standing in one of those spectral photographers' parks with photographers' storm-clouds behind him. It was not new. It had been there for over six years.
This quote first alerts the reader to the presence of grief and loss in the text. The photograph represents the loss of the boss' son in World War I six years ago. The boss does not name it out loud to his friend, demonstrating the unspoken, private nature of the boss' sorrow.
Although over six years had passed away, the boss never thought of the boy except as lying unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for ever. "My son!" groaned the boss. But no tears came yet. In the past, in the first months and even years after the boy's death, he had only to say those words to be overcome by such grief that nothing short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him. Time, he had declared then, he had told everybody, could make no difference.
This quote provides deep insight into the boss' grief, now six years old. His grief has preserved his memory of his son as "lying unchanged," as if no time has passed despite it being six years on. This quote also demonstrates the way the boss' grief has calcified. He is no longer able to access the raw emotion of his sorrow, despite his claims after his son's death that time would make no difference. At this point, Mansfield leaves open the question of whether the boss has indeed healed from the trauma, or whether he has simply stopped feeling his sorrow as a coping mechanism. As the story progresses, the boss' actions towards the fly and his loss of memory suggest that it is the latter.
Then the front legs waved, took hold, and, pulling its small, sodden body up, it began the immense task of cleaning the ink from its wings. Over and under, over and under, went a leg along a wing as the stone goes over and under the scythe. Then there was a pause, while the fly, seeming to stand on the tips of its toes, tried to expand first one wing and then the other. It succeeded at last, and, sitting down, it began, like a minute cat, to clean its face. Now one could imagine that the little front legs rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The horrible danger was over; it had escaped; it was ready for life again.
This quote describes the actions of the fly from the boss' perspective. The narrator describes the fly's actions in poignant, compassionate detail, rendering it an object of sympathy and suggesting that the boss identifies with the fly. The fly's "immense task" suggests the boss' great difficulty in processing his grief over his dead son. We can imagine that the boss feels hopeful at witnessing the "horrible danger [be] over" for the fly, and to see it "ready for life again." Yet only a few lines later, the fly is thwarted and ultimately dies. Perhaps Mansfield's lesson is a dark reminder that some sorrows are too much to process and that the moment of joyful rebirth may not come.
All the same, we cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves.
In one of the story's most poignant lines, Mansfield offers a dark view of human experience. Perhaps stemming from her own illness and sorrow, this quote illustrates the futility of our pleasures. A tree may cling to its last leaves, but inevitably it loses them as winter comes. So, too, is the loss of our own pleasures inevitable. The narrator utters this quote in relation to Mr. Woodifield's social visits to the city, but it has much deeper significance for the whole story.
