Virginia Woolf's The Death Of A Moth

‘“One could not help watching him. One, was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full, pathetic’” (Woolf 1). She continually pities the fact that the moth continues to make the most of his desperate and futile situation. No matter his frailty and impending doom, the moth continues to carelessly dance around the windowpane, either because he is unaware that he will soon die, or because he chooses not to care about his demise. However, Woolf begins to realize that the moth’s strength is failing him, and she comes to the cold conclusion that he is at death’s door. Not soon after that, the moth senses that his strength is failing him, but even upon knowing his inevitable death, the moth continues to fight. Woolf’s heart goes out to the insect. ‘“It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life (Woolf 2)’”. She resolves to root for the moth, and applaud his final protest against death. By the use of her writing style, Woolf has caused the audience to root for the moth’s final efforts along with her. By getting so emotionally

In her essay, Woolf resorts to a melancholic, even a sad tone. Watching the moth and its unsuccessful attempts to get out of the windowpane to where life goes on, Woolf feels towards him “a kind of pity” (195). The word “pity” pops up in the work constantly, which puts reader into sympathetic mood. Then, describing the moth’s last effort to escape from the glass trap and her useless try to help it, Woolf uses a helpless tone. As well as the moth, she gives up. There is no way one “had any chance against death” (Woolf 195). These words evoke a hopeless feeling that there is no way out, no matter how hard we try.

Moreover, Dillard’s and Woolf’s pieces investigates the process of death, the end of the cycle. Dillard believes that by “grasp[ing] your one necessity and not let[ting] it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death…cannot you part” (Dillard 66). In other words, one should seize their destiny till their body decomposes in the ground,

The theme that I saw in this essay was the mystery death of the moth. In this essay Virginia Woolf makes many comparisons to life and death. She compares the delicate insignificance of the moth’s life to everyday human’s struggles. In Virginia Woolf's essay death of a moth she uses the moth to be symbolic to us humans and life in itself. The message I received from this essay is that if the symbolism of the moth is understood very clearly. For example, as she states “The moth flies from side to side on the window pane and the settles once more as everything around the moth continued unaware of its movements.” This can be compared to our everyday lives and how although we may stop and stand still or pass away, life continues without us for everyone else. Woolf

Virginia Woolf, a very well known author in England, wrote the essay, “The Death of the Moth.” Woolf was a troubled woman who had seen much of her family pass away, therefore, this may have made her see death through different eyes than the average person. While witnessing a moth struggling to escape out a window and survive one day, she made a few realizations about the small creature. The author of “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf, conveys both her feelings of pity and admiration towards the moths drive through her comparisons and simple sentences.

In her essay “The Death of the Moth”, Virginia Woolf depicts the struggle of life confronting death through the death of a moth. Woolf sees a moth flying in “a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant” (385). She uses this soft autumnal description of her morning to emphasize the beauty of life and the happiness one feels while being alive; however, she uses the moth to represent life itself and show its own struggles: “ [the moth] tried to fly across...the window-pane”, but “he failed” (386). She uses the moth’s "failure and awkwardness" (386) to announce death’s arrival and the moth’s constant effort to keep flying to show a desperation to hang on to life. Why moth is so attached to life?. “After perhaps a seventh attempt [the moth] slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, onto his back on the window sill” (385). No matter how bad the consequences of the moth’s attempts to fly, he was not going to surrender and after recognizing that “there was something marvelous as well as pathetic about” the moth due to his constants attempts to live, Woolf “stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself”, but when she notice “the approach of death… [she] laid the pencil down again” (385). Woolf’s use of the pencil instead of her own fingers shows how fragile the life of the moth was and how careful she was trying to be to help the “insignificant creature” (385). However, her shift from interest on the moth life to its death might

The story by Virginia Wolf universally illustrates the struggle for life and death. It is a common phrase that death is inevitable the story shows the struggles with life that are not won in the end. In The Death of the Moth, Woolf observes a moth flying against a window pane, seemingly trying to get to the outside world, and not aware that the window pane is blocking its way. There is truth in saying the only commonality between lives is the inevitability of death. “The Death of the Moth” by Virginia Woolf explores this theme. Although the thesis is never formally stated, it can be interpreted to be that death is inescapable, and in spite of life being an uphill battle, it can never be won as eventually death claims us all. Taking into account Woolf’s personal life, which was plagued with bouts of mental illnesses, ultimately resulting in her suicide; this essay could be considered a comparison between her own life and the moth’s. This essay is intended for the general public, but it particularly resonates with women and minorities, this is because of Woolf’s description of the moth’s battles. In retelling the moth’s struggles the audience develops a certain bond with the moth, this is amplified for people who have been repressed, as they can relate to the hardships this looked down-upon moth has endured.

Death has become a highly avoided topic within the society of today. Many people stray away from the subject matter of death due it’s common belief of sadness and heartbreak. Edgar Allan Poe, a beloved 19th century author, utilizes death as the main theme within his short stories and poems. This unique style of writing is not out of the ordinary, but has been commonly pursued by Poe due to the frequency of death at this time in history. Edgar Allan Poe greatly exhibits death based stories within “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Cask of Amontillado”.

He pointed out in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition” that “Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetical tones.” (Poe, 3). Additionally, of all the melancholy tones, death is the most poetical one thus making death of the beauty is the highest poetical achievement possible. Therefore, by relating death with other central elements of Poe’s work, some critics have regarded this as the sole starting point in interpretation of his stories, and believed that his shocking, yet brilliant descriptions of death are made for the sake of poetical beauty while others argued that his obsession with death in fiction was just reflecting his own violent and destructive personality. In addition to this particular theory, J. Gerald Kennedy observes that “Poe's lifelong obsession with death and the undead sprang from the early trauma of maternal loss and separation…” (Kennedy, 538). He furthermore notes that his mother became “… the proto- type of all the absent yet unforgettable women in his poetry and fiction, those encrypted yet deathless ladies who excited both dread and longing.” (Kennedy, 583). Such immortalized beauty invoked emotional distress and disturbances among the characters in his stories, which led to scenes of unimaginable violence culminating in both murders and suicides alike. Beauty

Through the parallels drawn between Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith, Virginia Woolf is able to use the notion of inevitable death to address the complexity of human nature and the erraticism of the conduct in its process.

Throughout this entire course it has been apparent that every author has their own way of seeing the world, which is portrayed in their own writings. There are perspectives that do match up eventually; these authors and their literary works are Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, Aruther Miller’s The Death of a Salesman, and finally Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”. These authors have rather similar perspectives in these literature works. All these works involve the human nature of life and death in rather prejudice and unfair ways.

Death as a theme in literature is as old as the concept of literature itself. Experiencing someone important to oneself dying is something most human beings can connect to. The difference is how one perceives death and how one deals with it on an emotional level. There are countless examples of books with different, unique interpretations of death but this essay will focus on just two: Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both of these stories have main characters that must come to terms with death but the ways they go about it and the conclusions they come to are vastly different. Death is used as a literary device to show the benefits of letting go and acceptance of things that people can not change in both The Garden Party and Frankenstein by showing opposite ways one can handle death and the results of those choices.

In the works performed by Virginia Woolf’s novel, To The Lighthouse, Pessoa’s play The Mariner, and Holbein’s anamorphic painting ‘The Ambassadors’, death is a prevalent presence that lingers in the realm of the living. It is an order of nature that embodies all life from the moment it begins. While all three works portray the temporality of life, they each shape the aura of death in various ways. In The Mariner, death is introduced in the form of a corpse. The manifestation of fear and discomfort becomes the crux of Pessoa’s play whereas in the painting of ‘The Ambassadors’, death exists through a distorted image of a skull that could only come into focus when viewed from an oblique angle, making the skull a grim symbolism of decay that engulfs the dead body. Lastly, in To The Lighthouse, death is observed through mourning and remembering the ones whom they have lost. Just as mourning means reliving memories

Dillard’s primary argument has many layers including a more personal argument for herself and a more universal aspect of her argument as well. With one of the meanings and aspects of the symbol of the moth and the flame, is the concept of her call to writing. This can be inferred through the popular expression “like a moth drawn to a flame,” in this way, Dillard and many others are drawn to writing. The idea that Dillard is struggling and arguing that being a writer is a sacrifice that often leads to solitude in the profession is seen through her mentions of Rimbaud, the repetition of the fact that she is alone both times she witnessed a burning moth, and the

The writer is inspired by recurrent deaths in her town. This mortality rate inspires her to write mostly on death. Today’s writers are inspired by her ability to write on this responsive painful subject in a creative invented way.