Death of a Moth by Virginia Woolfe Analysis

        Matt Jordan

11/10/16

Benigni

ENGL 110

Paper 3

Perhaps the most fantastic, incomprehensible riddle of humanity is the inevitable plotline that we all must succumb to; that life is not chosen, and that death is imminent. All that is deemed biotic upon the earth is a temporary manifestation of the universe, and within the pantheon of writers there are constant introductions to either the absurdity, or the explanation, for why this cycle must encompass all human beings. Virginia Woolfe, in her short essay Death of the Moth, displays her perception of life and death through her episodic experience, as she spectates and ponders the struggle of a dying moth that has decided to spend its final moments in her midst.

        Woolfe introduces the moth by stripping it of any fantastic qualities that would alienate it from relatability and empathy from the reader. She distinguishes this moth from the gayness of the butterflies, and also from the mystic beauty of the yellow underwings (a nocturnal moth with yellow wings) that are commonly thought of in rural England. No, instead this moth is a day-moth, with hay-colored wings, and with no beauty but simply the beauty that, nevertheless, it has a disposition of contentment within itself. We do not see the fantastic, sacred qualities that Dillard illustrates in her homonymous essay that relates the moth to an alienated writer, but instead Woolfe chooses to relate the moth to all that lives, particularly humanity. She explains it as “little or nothing but life”, a phrase to show that she viewed the moth as an archetype of what life is. The moth becomes “a simple form of energy”, a “bead of life”, and its life endeavors are coined as “pathetic”. Because of the moth’s simplicity and relatability, the moth’s struggle and submission to death also becomes the reader’s as the story progresses.

        Woolfe uses the setting, a mixture of nature and agricultural elements, to convey the indifference of the world to a particular loss of life. She combines elements of man and nature in order to reveal to the reader that whether in the natural world, or in urbanized settings, the idea of insignificance is not limited to the moth but also to human beings. The moth represents nature, an evolutionary step back that returns to the origins of life, and how the same fate that we face now is a fate that has existed since the beginning of life on Earth. During the day, Woolfe is looking out of her window at a rather idealistic, sunny day in rural England, where the fields are being ploughed and the birds are presuming their usual antics in the trees. The rooks (an English equivalent to the crow) are described a “vast net with thousands of black knots”, and these birds are described as repeatedly flying around a tree and then settling into it all morning long. During the day, the toil of the farmer is the usual cycle of man, and the activity of the birds is the cycle of nature. When the moth is introduced, the activities of the setting seem entirely indifferent to his life, and continue despite its existence. When midday arrives and the moth’s death is near, the setting is described as still and quiet, which was to be expected at this time of the day according to Woolfe. While this was the expected daily cycle, this still silence “seemed to oppose” the moth on this day. Perhaps the normality of the setting was made spectacular as the moth would never experience the energetic, moving setting it had known earlier that day ever again. The setting reflects the moth’s death and struggle in a way that makes it become a manifestation of the antagonist; the passing of time, and death. Woolfe has effectively displayed a metaphor for both life and of death through the frail protagonist and the ominous, overpowering setting.

        The setting and the specimen fight for Woolfe’s attention throughout the story, and while the setting is alive and moving initially, she finds herself constantly distracted from the moth fluttering through her window as she mentions forgetting about it a few times and then looking back at the creature time and time again. Her tone’s transformation is that of indifference into one of guilt. At the beginning of the essay, the moth was but a piece of the setting, and a rather insignificant piece of it. She speaks of the moth at first, but even in the essay’s introduction she transitions and eventually abandons the moth to describe the weather, wildlife, and agriculture that also composed the setting. As the moth’s death draws nearer, the tone of the essay changes dramatically, and even her sentence structure begins to lengthen and become more sporadic.