The Spider and the Fly

“Just step into my office”

Community readers hear the mentor's invitation "Just step into my office" as an echo of Mary Howitt's "The Spider and the Fly", whose opening line — "Will you walk into my parlour? said the Spider to the Fly" — has become the byword for a predator's courteous lure. Read against the poem, the office becomes the parlour: a welcome extended precisely so it can be closed, the false warmth of the powerful drawing the unwary in.