Reading The Spider and The Fly [2022]

Analysis: THE SPIDER and the FLY/ Mary Howitt

                                                WILL: The unsung hero

                          [exhaustible, malleable, destructible force of life]

Introduction:

Born into the world wide web, are we doomed to fight spiders all our life? Or worse, learn to ensnare flies? With Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest, now debunked and us facing a future with AI, has it come the time to examine folk tales and decide where we stand? As flies? What is more relevant when studying a work of language than to exercise critical thinking to compare philosophies? To use art, as it asks, not simply to contemplate and enjoy, but also to set a course for the future.

I want to address two main ideas by way of introduction. My choice of poetry and my choice of this specific poem. To begin, I must think about the poet.

The poem was written by Mary Howitt, published in 1829. June Jordan famously said, ‘poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth’. Undoubtedly, this is true but, poetry, starts as an educational act. Mary Howitt lived a life connected to writers, amiable, stimulating, and both, her original works, and her translations from the tales of Hans Anderson seem to suggest she was concerned with innocent, enjoyable rhymes, for children. One can’t probably escape the need, when writing literature, especially children’s literature, to teach. Given that poets and writers draw material from their own lives and from the lives around them, this poem becomes deeper than its anthropomorphic entertainment.

For a poet to create, there is possibly a structure consisting of a core message that needs to be translated into a visual experience and become timeless in its relevance while having loveable, playful, even forgivable characters. This is, for me, the most striking feature of poetry, mainly this one. This poem is not an abstraction, or like Wordsworth writes, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Rather, it grips me with its simplicity, almost claustrophobic length, and its crisp language. Maybe it was meant to be memorised, like a best friend who reminds you when you’re about to make yet another mistake. Anthropomorphism remains my favourite style. Sketching animals into the template of human traits does two things, one, it lets us explore hidden emotions and motives behind the actions of the characters and two it does this while maintaining some distance to make us feel less pain or distress. If the story of ‘the ugly duckling’ was called ‘the ugly child’ it would not be likely to be read.

In general poetry that appeals to me, is less free verse and more a matter-of-fact presentation that, conceals layers open to interpretation. I read something by Rushdie, ‘a poet’s work … to name the un nameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, to start arguments, shape the world, stop it from going to sleep.’ Is this poem not doing exactly this, whether Mary Howitt planned it or not, in its attribution of pronouns? It is brief and brilliant, a soundless scream, to resonate so that no ‘fly’ years from now wonders where her story was forgotten, and no ‘spider’ years from now celebrates that his ‘cunning’ remains unbeaten.

Body:

Why are openings so hard? Of this assignment, of conversations? Why is the making of the doorway so cumbersome? Because it implies that beyond the doorway is a path, and like every path, it must be walked upon. The follow through is the challenge. The theme of this homely work of childhood rhyme is moral dilemma, it comes through as a curtain. Behind this curtain is a mirror, to all the faces we may wear ourselves. Why is it that the end of the poem is palpable in its beginning? How do we justify our actions if we play spiders? Do we forgive ourselves for being flies? Like every fable it is a moral treatise.

1.’will you walk into my parlour’ said the spider to the fly. The ominous opening line opens the door to the spider’s commitment to his hunt. His amber eyes glistened with feigned friendliness. It’s the dark start to a crescendo that builds throughout the poem and stirs something deeply embedded from collective consciousness into the heart of every woman. There is no way to know, what is to come, or is there? There is a subtle redundancy of the word ‘will’ in the above question. The tone of the spider, as an aggressor and manipulator are already set. It is almost as if he knows what he will do and how he will do it. The word ‘will’ is the nidus of it all. In the battle of wills, he will mock her desire to escape with this ploy of flattery and then pretend respect for her prior wishes; eventually wearing down her will to fly away. Born with wings to escape the web of silk, she submits her will to a higher power (the higher power being her need for constant affirmation). This is not only a poem about temptation and manipulation, but also about addiction. This is the story of every addiction, social media, substance abuse, narcissistic relationships, and abusive mentors alike.

Anybody who wants to own, uses attention with the promise of love as a tool in their arsenal, the others being reward and punishment. The intent is malicious. Once the intent has been fulfilled, the attention will cease. In a relationship, if the intent is to marry a superstar, it later turns disastrous, the intent not being to love but to acquire. In narcissistic individuals, narcissistic parents, narcissistic teachers, narcissistic friends, the intent is to boost the ego, once fulfilled the fate is negative. Social media has been a breeding ground where ideas such as ‘love bombing’ ‘gaslighting’ ‘ghosting’ all have become commonplace. Every single one of these is a sort of breaking down of a once idolised ‘fly’ after a ‘spider’ is either satisfied or no longer interested. The narcissist mocks their victim, who they once thought was deserving of adoration. They are torn apart, word by word, in front of thousands of people fill their lives with what others think. The comments and likes shape the victim like clay into whatever society wants them to be. All of this happens while the victims think they have approval from others and therefore meaning in their life. 

There is no better example of a web of words, than that found in ‘Lolita’, concealing the depravity of Nabokov’s 37-year-old male character’s exploitation of a twelve-year-old girl. The text plays on the blur between what’s really being said and how it’s being said. The entire book is structured like the demented rambling of a manipulative criminal. It starts off with the narrator describing himself: “My sole heir and executor, you must listen to me.” The narrator is Humbert Humbert, who goes on to describe his obsession with Dolores Haze, a teenage girl who lives in the house he rents. In the haze of the web of desperate pleadings of love, the monstrous seducer commits crimes against her and basks in his power; that the book continues to be famously read despite how it gets under our skin is a testament to how guilty and fallible we all are.

2.’how very soon this silly little fly, hearing his wily flattering words, came slowly flitting by.’

No one is silly. It’s merely a difference of perspective. That old-world narrative, now thankfully being progressively replaced, the no pain no gain ethic, widely romanticised in art especially cinema, pushes people into situations and actions onlookers find stupid. What if the fly had a gut instinct that she was on the hunter’s web, that being her natural predator the spider had laid out a trap? What if she suddenly had her wits about her and was able to override her doubt, even just for a moment, yet decided to take a risk, that she thought was a natural price to pay, for the sake of exciting experiences? What about trust? Tricksters play pranks in guise of playful mischievousness and disrupt trust but are considered entertaining. A whole culture where outsmarting someone is considered a sign of success and fodder for amusement makes it unfair to label the few who are trusting, stupid. The fly’s need to be complimented, celebrated, is a part of female existence and was to her important that she didn’t care how far she went to get it.  Maybe she had a simple idea: if the spider did feel such an outpouring of affection for her, surely, he would not want her to suffer? Our values and our needs are our operating systems, and they will rationalise any input based on what we want to believe. Dismissing the fly as a silly scapegoat of vanity is harsh.

Maybe there are no flies, just lots of spiders, each with their own interests at stake. Maybe we all make up what defines us to our perceptions. Not cruel like a spider’s web but distorted realities that only fit our lenses. Looking through a fly’s perspective, it can be hard for a human mind to understand the motivation of her actions. She was out of her depth, in the presence of a predator who had so many years of experience on her, that she was surely doomed from the start.  The fly wanted him to love her. The spider wanted an easy meal.  She had no chance of validation in such a scenario. She could have easily dodged the spider’s net with her acrobatics, or perhaps just flown away with ease. But maybe there isn’t such thing as a “fly’s perspective” because it is not actually possible to empathize with anyone accused of vanity but yourself.

Phantom Thread, the movie, where both the male and female characters develop abusive ways towards each other is an example of interchangeable fly and spider roles. Their suffering was born out of their fear. Fear of being neglected. Fear of being replaced by someone better. Fear of being left alone. The movie ends with an alternative ending, a strange depiction of love defined by mutual abuse.

3. ‘He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den, within his little parlor, but she ne’er came out again!’

The fly’s silence screams louder than its fate. Why is there an absence of an emphatic “no”, the bizarre conditioning of women that they must not make a scene, causing discomfort to male authority? This is a disturbing aspect. Where is the struggle, does a prey submit to ease its pain in the face of the final eventuality? Or is there no longer any fight left in her? The current movements teaching women to speak up might help to break down the tightly knotted patriarchy, one which begins in childhood. The one who sows the seed for an oak tree is unlikely to see any benefits from the shade, no matter how thick the tree’s branches have grown.  Yet, instead of returning to silence, why shouldn’t we rage against the dying of the light?

Alternatively, perhaps as soon as the fly’s wings fluttered in the spider’s web, its algorithm built not to struggle, but to trigger sensor-based SOS caused a robotic drone to descend from a nearby tree. the drone then sent a laser into the fly and transmuted the atoms in it. These atoms travelled back to a long-ago time, where an AI archive stored them for further study. The world was an alternative reality, sometimes it truly feels like one.

Conclusion:

‘Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history’ Plato. What do we do with this truth? It is important to use it as a tool, not only to solve problems, but also to ask questions.

If the poet serves as a platform for the invisible, this poem will serve as a cautionary tale eternally, every age drawing its own parallels with the art form of its time. As early as 1865, while writing Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll had already applied the poem as a parody to convey cunning taught to a tortoise.

Today, faced with blurred intersecting lines of confusing definitions of self-love, narcissistic indulgence, brutality, feedback, we use the poem to consider how to reduce the impact praise has on us. The serotonin we chase in validation is also available to us after a run, during a connected conversation, with community work and in the grounding effect of faith, whatever that may mean to each one.

Imagine the power of quiet confidence that is not swayed by criticism or applause, but this is easier said than done. Socializing amongst teenagers is consumerist. Everything has a price.  Those who mingle at parties with their eyes glued to their phones demand a price for their company. The tool of praise is used to incentivise. The intent for those who praise and pump the artifice of self-worth is to control. The audience on the other hand does not care the intent of the pumpers, the audience only wants to hold their phone up to see the numbers of likes so that they too can feel good about themselves. As time passes, they feel good only based on how they look to others, how they live in comparison to others, how they express themselves as compared to others, etc… While they think they are being promoted by being loved, they are being purposely manipulated so that they can be used as pawns later by those who hold power. At some point this feeling wears off and their realization remains that they were merely used. A sense of despair and defeat, the dismal den of the spider, becomes the last abode. Let’s all strive to be aware of our actions and how they affect those around us and in our lives.

Dreamcatchers, symbolically entrapping souls on their way to the afterlife, symbolically entrapping bad dreams and the need to hold onto the good ones, coarse, fragile versions of webs, define the entrapment of both, good and evil within us.