The Fly
The Fly ‘The Fly’ by Miroslav Holub, is a poem satirising war by comparing battle with a day in the life of a fly, and in many ways comparing a soldier and a fly, and their insignificance. ... Holub uses an understatement, ‘the groans’, to convey the insignificance of death in battle from a fly’s point of view, in contrast with the readers perspective. ... The second stanza begins with formal references to battle, ‘fourteenth charge of the French cavalry’, is juxtaposed with the active sex life of a fly, ‘she mated with a brown-eyed male fly’. ... This is ironic, because a fly is considered to be an insignificant and powerless creature in the eyes of a soldier, as is the dead ‘Duke’ to the fly.