SOURCE: “1918-23; The Final Phase,” in The Art of Katherine Mansfield, S. Chand & Company, 1980, pp. 234-321.

In the following excerpt from his full-length study of Katherine Mansfield, Chatterjee calls “The Fly” a “baffling riddle that lends itself to many conflicting, and, sometimes, fanciful interpretations.”

This much-explicated¹ story is deservedly famous. It was completed on 20th February, 1922 and published in ‘The Nation’ on 18th March in the same year. Exceptionally short in length, it tells by implication much more than what it states explicitly. The result is not only an extraordinary depth and suggestiveness but also a puzzling obscurity. For, with many of the suggestions left deliberately vague, the story becomes an enchanting, but baffling riddle which lends itself to many conflicting and, sometimes, fanciful interpretations.

A businessman confines himself in his office to think of his only son who was killed in the war six years ago, and...