Perseverance In Katherine Mansfield's The Fly

There is an old fable, The King Bruce and the Spider, it’s called, and like all fables it’s designed to teach children a moral lesson. The story, in short, is about the King of Scotland Robert Bruce who took refuge in a cave after losing a battle. While in hiding, he saw a spider trying to spin a web on the cave wall. The spider fell seven times before it finally completed its task. King Robert, taking a leaf out of the spider’s book battled the English forces repeatedly with his limited troops and finally achieved success. The story obviously intended to showcase the value of perseverance or more importantly that failure should not stop you from trying again. The Kerala government seems to have followed in King Robert’s footsteps. Previous failure in a host of countries has not deterred Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy from declaring that a Prohibition will be enforced in the state, over a span of ten years.
This step taken by the Kerala government may not be uncalled for. India does not have the severe hard drug problems which plague the West, but excessive

Adopt a live and let live policy or keep applying the same formula hoping success will gradually drift within our reach. The spider may have succeeded the seventh time it climbed, but there is an entirely different take on perseverance in Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Fly’. In this short story, a man observes a fly sitting on some blotting paper. He drops a blot of ink on it and watches it clean itself and just as it attempts to fly away he drops another blot of ink. He does this a number of times until the fly dies from the effort. Maybe a different strategy is in order for addressing the issue of excess alcohol consumption. Why not try the strategy Netherlands has used for the sale of Cannabis. Allow the manufacture and sale of alcohol but regulate it and encourage medical treatment for addiction. This model certainly warrants some criticism, but at least it has some degree of