In “The Fixed”, Annie Dillard’s images of a Polyphemus moth’s emergence from its cocoon, diction that emphasizes the brutality of its struggle to survive, and paradoxical elements that highlight the disparity between the grand image of an “ideal” moth and the grotesque actuality of one, combined with details that describe the magnitude of the challenges the moth must overcome in order to survive suggest that Polyphemus moths (people) must prevail over innumerable obstacles, in which success if often determined solely by chance, in order to “spread their wings”, achieve their full potential, or to triumph over the trials of life, and in failing this, be condemned to an existence of suffering and
