In “The Man in the Black Suit,” the bee symbolizes fate, or random events that humans cannot control.

A bee sting is usually an event without serious consequences. Only in rare cases, like Dan’s, when a person has a bee sting allergy are there serious consequences. At the beginning of the story, Gary mentions that there is no doctor in Motton (46). This fact sets up a series of conditions that make Dan’s death seem like fate, rather than an accident.

According to the History of Allergy, French physiologist Charles Richet discovered anaphylaxis in 1913, a discovery for which he received a Nobel Prize (Munich 2014, 54). Theoretically then, in 1914, doctors around the world could have known about the condition and its treatment. Gary writes that there is a doctor in the neighboring town of Casco, but it is debatable whether a small-town doctor in rural Maine would be able to treat the condition. Dan was stung while he was out in the field, so even if there had been a doctor nearby, Dan may have died before he was able to get there.

No amount of reasoning can change the inevitability of Dan’s death, and the bee is a chilling reminder of how little control humans have over their own lives.