21 pages • 42 minutes read
Virginia WoolfThe Death of the Moth
Fiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Anthropomorphism
Virginia Woolf assigns human-like qualities to nature, especially the day moth whose life and death become the essay’s focal point. She refers to the moth as “he” and describes its pointless fluttering as an expression of excitement, a “queer spectacle” (Paragraph 3); his movement is compared to “dancing.” Woolf contemplates what the moth could have been “had he been born in any shape” other than his own (Paragraph 2). Humanizing the moth by imagining its potential implies that the moth is a failure of nature, but Woolf quickly dispels this idea by stating that its instinctual behavior represents “the true nature of life” (Paragraph 2). Woolf’s anthropomorphizing of the moth creates a sense of connection and sympathy for its eventual death. The moth’s demise dissolves any remaining boundaries between it and Woolf as she concludes that humans, too, are nothing against “a power of such magnitude” as death’s (Paragraph 5). Woolf uses “I” rather than “he” in the essay’s final sentence, anthropomorphizing the moth by giving it the power of language (Paragraph 5). In acknowledging that death befalls all living beings, Woolf’s technique serves her essay’s purpose, which is to explore the meaning of the moth’s life and thus, the meaning of human life.
Stream of Consciousness
Woolf describes her brain and those of other humans as composed of “so many narrow and intricate corridors” (Paragraph 3). This metaphor of the brain as a hallway with various entrances, each of which Woolf enters and exits at her own will, provides an apt analogy for her stream of consciousness technique.
With this technique, a writer can explore the true essence of their surroundings by embracing and exploring their thoughts—their inner world—as they spontaneously arise. This allows the reader to experience the writer’s thought process as it unfolds. In Woolf’s case, her subjective lens gives the essay its characteristic emotional depth. Woolf’s thoughts on the moth meander but arrive at a point as she weaves from this humble experience a narrative about the meaning of life and death.
The essay begins with a more objective tone, its focus on the physical differences between species of insects, but Woolf quickly shifts to a tone of philosophical and emotional meditation. She becomes engrossed in the smallest living being nearby, her prose transforming into poetry as the reality of the moth’s fluttering becomes increasingly “strange:” It is unveiled as “a thread of vital life” (Paragraphs 2-3). This sense of wonder is achieved via stream of consciousness. The reader is able to see the scene in a new light as Woolf shares her mixed feelings, her admiration and pity, for the moth: “there was something marvelous as well as pathetic about him” (Paragraph 3). Rather than focus on readily available, objective occurrences, Woolf is inspired by hidden secrets and paradoxes within the everyday and mundane, such as the fluttering of a moth on a windowpane. Woolf calls attention to the fact that life (as well as death) surround everything in nature, though one hardly takes the time to consider “the strangeness of it” or life’s purpose (Paragraph 3). Woolf’s technique also grants her the freedom to address incomplete ideas throughout the essay, reiterating and revising her thought process until she comes to a satisfying conclusion. This stream of ideas is further distilled into a style that is more reminiscent of poetry than traditional prose.
Figurative Language
The figurative language with which Woolf describes her surroundings creates a vivid atmosphere. The rooks’ flight is compared to “a vast net with thousands of black knots in it” (Paragraph 1). This simile emphasizes the instinctual connection between the individual rooks and their “annual festivities” as a flock (Paragraph 1). Woolf compares such energy, that of the outside world, to the liveliness of the moth’s fluttering. She condenses life in its scale and variety into a moth that embodies “a tiny bead of pure life” (Paragraph 3). By comparing the vast energy of the world around her with that within a small creature, Woolf emphasizes the moth’s strength of character despite its unimpressive appearance. This, in turn, strengthens the connection, emotional and symbolic, between moth and woman.
Woolf uses an extended metaphor in the final paragraph, personifying death as an enemy or villain who arrives to vanquish the moth: She finds the moth’s foe “indifferent, impersonal” (Paragraph 5). Death is not readily identified but intrinsic to the very nature of life. Woolf frames death with imagery of “masses of humans” and “an entire city” submerged at its cruel whims—making the moth’s odds for the “the side of life” all the more dire (Paragraph 5). Woolf sympathizes with the moth despite its life or death having no direct bearing on her life. Still, she invests the creature with a sense of hope, hoping to hold on to a life that “no one else valued or desired to keep” (Paragraph 5). In the end, the emotional build-up via extended metaphor creates catharsis, the satisfaction of release.
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By Virginia Woolf
