Moth

Anne Dillard’s “The Death of a Moth” is a representation of her view on death. Dillard puts the reader in her shoes when she explains the settings and events that go on around her. Anne Dillard lived a single life with her two cats which were yellow and black. Dillard first opens the reader to a single crustacean, the spider, which she says is intelligent because he is somehow managing to survive as opposed to the bugs that become trapped in its spider’s web under the toilet. Eventually, Dillard…

In her essay, Death of the Moth, the acclaimed English woman-of-letters, Virginia Woolf, fills the spaces between the lines with Pathos, be it from the fecundity of her words to the philosophical arguments evoked by her subject matter. These dramatic attributes, however, do not prove to be antithetical to the core tenets of her thesis. While abstract—as Woolf predominantly is—the essay portrays a world replete with life and death symbolism, centered on the strenuous last moments of a moth’s life…

Like a Moth to the Flame Throughout history, there have been double standards in gender roles that expect women to appear in idealized fashions; foot binding in the song dynasty, Spartan expectations of women’s motherhood, and even in modern day as manifested in social-media driven expectations for women’s looks and behaviors. These patriarchal societal pressures force upon women the notions of an idealized woman and are often unattainable, to the point that women struggle and suffer trying to…

Analysis of the Death of the Moth Death is inevitable. It can happen in the blink of an eye with zero warning, or be a drawn out process, as the individual struggles to survive. All living entities will face their death at some point. Do all entities obtain the same amount of energy, or life force though? Virginia Woolf examines life and death in her essay Death of the Moth. The piece was published in 1942, approximately a year after Woolf faced her own inevitable death by suicide. Woolf…

afterlife and a greater being to satisfy their curiosity and questions such as what is death? Can one change their fate of how they pass? Is death larger than life? The battle between one’s fate and will is explored through the essay “The Death of The Moth” by Virginia Woolf. The soft flow of her words paint images of benign winds and a sharp breath on a mid-September day; her phrases put her readers at peace, but the sudden struggles she writes brings a rigid edge into the short story leaving…

Life is strange and hard to explain and everyone sees it in a different way. Two authors that discuss life and death are Alan Lightman in "Our Place in the Universe" and Virginia Woolf in "The Death of the Moth." They describe both similarl and differently, they both feel pity for things that live, and are confused in were everything should belong, are both confused by life and admire both the peace and tragedies that mother nature has to offer. Although, Lightman is more interested with the…

Helena Maria Viramontes’ short story “The Moths” follows a latina narrator as she recounts her childhood struggles with religion and family. To escape beatings from her father, her mother would send the narrator to “help Abuelita plants wild lilies” and other plants in “coffee cans”(322). Throughout the turmoil of her teenage years, the narrator’s Abuelita was always there to care for her. As the story continues, it is divulged that this time the help will be different because Mama Luna is dying…

Also in “The Death of a Moth,” Dillard not only continues to use the symbolism of candles throughout the narrative, she also mentions the number of candles or wicks numerically throughout her writing. When on the mountains, Dillard first only refers to “the candle” (7) when the moth begins burning from its flame. Later on, the author writes that the candle the moth continues to fuel “had two wicks, two flames of identical light, side by side” (8). At the very end, Dillard writes “I have three…

In Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolf, the narrator observes a moth desperately trying to fly out of a room through a closed window. Woolf describes the moth's physical changes, thoughts, and experiences in great detail. The narrator is moved to go and help the moth but decides against it after realising that the reason for the moth's struggle is its imminent death. Woolf portrays a generally disregarded animal, the moth, as it exists in nature, especially on this September day. The…

her melancholic childhood, Woolf attempts suicide in 1913 and ultimately succeeds in 1941. Her childhood largely influenced her writing her piece titled, “The Death of the Moth,” which was published posthumously. She explores the life and death continuum while drawing her readers into her own realizations of them using a moth as a tangible subject. Woolf utilizes her levels of language to manipulate her audience to take on the role of what her tone is suggesting and leads them to her ultimate…