THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

Summary

This story is about a young man who visits his old father who has lost all he had,
and has to close down due to the Great Depression. Throughout the meeting, the
father shows that he isn’t as cool as he tries to seem about his bankruptcy (also
trying to convince himself) and his thirst for money, which very clearly irritates his
son and harms their relationship.

Title of the story

The fly in the ointment: Something that spoils a very good thing.

In our opinion, the fly in the ointment could be greed because it is what stresses
the old man so much, what leads him to swindling in order to get money. It is also
what probably caused the fight between father and son. However, in the story,
there is a second fly: the one that the narrator’s father tries to catch unsuccessfully
when it comes in the room. In our opinion this fly is also a symbol of the man’s
greed, which he can’t control, showing his weakness (something as small as a fly
was able to “beat” him), or it could be the money that he can’t get his hands on.

Characters

Old man: he is a factory owner who has gone bankrupt as well as many other
businessmen at the time of the Depression. He has a tense relationship with his
son, who goes to visit him on his last day at the factory (possibly to fix things with
him). He has two faces “Like all big faced men, his father had two faces (...) There
was the outer face like a soft warm and careless daub of innocent sealing wax,
and inside it, as if thumbed there by a seal, was a much smaller one, babyish,
shrewd, scared and hard”. The first face is the one the old man shows in public, so
as not to show any sign of weakness and to transmit confidence, and the other
one, in our opinion, the real face, which shows his true fears and how small he is
when he is not “wearing his mask”. Also, the man constantly tries to prove he is
better than Harold, his son. He does this by criticising his job as a provincial
lecturer and his lack of ambition as well as talking about how his hair is falling at
such a young age.

Throughout the story, the man tries to prove to himself and to his son that he
doesn’t need money and that he is not worried about his current situation.
However, in more than one occasion, his behaviour shows that he actually is
worried and does need money:

 “The little face suddenly became dominant within the outer folds of skin like
a fox looking out of a hole of clay” What the narrator is trying to say is that
when the young man offered his father money right after he said he didn’t
need it, the old man “took off his mask” and his real face started to show,
and quickly abandoned the idea of living in poverty.
 “Worrying? You keep on using that word. I’m not worrying.” “Things are fine
(...) I feel they’re fine. I know they are fine.” In both of these quotes, the old
man is trying to convince himself that he will change and that everything is
all right yet his nervous tone once again shows very clearly he isn’t that sure
about it.
 “Money isn’t necessary at all”, it is put into evidence that he does need it
when his son offers him money to which he replies “Why didn’t you tell me
before you could raise money? How can you raise it? Where? By when?”
This is the last sentence of the story said by the old man, just after talking
about his austere future, and how he wouldn’t touch money ever again. This
sentence makes us feel some pity for the old pathetic man who can’t fight
his addiction to money to the point of getting desperate when he gets the
opportunity to earn some.

Harold: is the old man’s son and hasn’t seen him for some time due to a past fight,
however, he is there to visit him on his last day before closing down. Harold truly
looks down on his father: he feels ashamed of how he swindled people just to get
money “...framed against that reflection of the window bars, the father suddenly
look the likeness of a convict in his cell“ this shows the man’s belief that his father
should be in jail for all he has done. He can also see through his mask and knows
when his father is using either of the faces “The little face suddenly became
dominant”. There is also one sentence which summarises how the son feels about
his father “... he hated to offer charity to his father. He hated to sit there knowing
the things he knew about him. He was ashamed to think how he, how they all
dreaded having the gregarious, optimistic, extravagant, uncontrollable,
disingenuous old man on their hands. The son hated to feel he was being in some
peculiar way he could not understand, mean, cowardly and dishonest” on the one
hand, the son feels it is his duty to save his father from this financial crisis yet he
knows that with the charity he gives him, he will keep on doing what he had been
doing until that moment.

Description of the setting

 “... the name of the firm newly painted” “Already, though only a month
bankrupt, the firm was becoming a ghost”. These are both clear images of
how the Depression quickly ruined successful people and “killed” their
companies.
 “... unemployed men and one or two beggars” This is described by the
narrator as a quite common scene which shows us the number of
unemployed people the Depression left. It shows the consequences of the
Great Depression
 “... the latest office buildings of the city stood out alarmingly like new
tombstones” By describing the new buildings as tombstones, he is in a way
comparing the city with a cemetery, which has a negative connotation,
probably related to the Great Depression which had caused terrible crisis in
the world and more specifically the cities where many companies and
families were “alive” (doing well with the money) and were now dead
(bankrupt).
Glossary

Tombstones: the rock put at the cemeteries with the name and the date of death.

Bankrupt: without enough money to pay what you owe.

Shrewd: Good at judging what people or situations are really like.

Ceiling: the upper interior surface of a room or other similar compartment.

Quarrel: an angry argument or disagreement.

Bankruptcy: the state of being bankrupt.

Bewildered: confused and indecisive.

Zest: great enthusiasm and energy.

 LITERATURE

THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

Juan Bautista Berisso

Franco Ammaturo

Lucio Pombo

Tomás Grandío