The Summer of Reading Has Begun!

Well, my summer of reading has at last begun.  Granted, I've only read two short stories by Katherine Mansfield, but I've read them, and they're on my list of things to read, so progress has been made.

First of all, I read "The Wind Blows".  It's very modern (read:  I'll need to read it again to truly understand what happens!) but it's not horrible.  The problem here is that I can't exactly say what it's about.  It seems to be about a woman who is remembering going to piano lessons to escape a mother that she hates, but she is remembering as she is on a boat with her brother, looking on another brother and sister walking along the same path that she once walked along with her brother.  The best part of the story is the atmosphere.  The wind and the sea are constant forces, almost like characters.  I think that's the part that I liked the most.  I have to narrow down exactly which short stories  will make it to my final list and this is a contender for the moment.

The other story I read is called "The Fly".  It's a little bit crazy.  It's about an old man going to visit his boss, and the old man remarks that his daughters went to Belgium and saw the grave of his son, as well as his boss' son, who had died in the war.  The boss practically comes apart thinking about this, since it was his only son, and he'd built his business for his son to inherit, and now that he's gone he feels like all that work has been for nothing.  Well, as he's mourning, he spies a fly that has fallen into an inkwell.  He dips his pen into the ink and puts the fly onto the blotting paper.  The fly bounces back and seems to survive, but the boss drops another drop of ink on the fly, waiting to see if he'll bounce back again.  It does, but slower this time.  It's clear that the boss admires the fly's struggle to survive, but he still drops a third drop on the fly.  The fly recovers once more, but it takes longer, and it doesn't seem to be a full recovery.  He finally drops one more drop of ink on the fly, and this kills it.  Of course, this fly is a metaphor for the soldiers who lost their lives in battle.  They could only recover from so many wounds before succumbing at last to death, especially when the party inflicting the wounds has no mercy.  It's characterized as a fascination with seeing just how much they can take before they can no longer fight for life, like it's just a big game.  After the fly dies, the boss tries to remember what he'd been thinking about before he began playing with the fly, but he can't of course.  This story was more intelligible, but somehow it just didn't feel like it was as beautifully written as "The Wind Blows."  Not a strong contender for the final list.