Moth, Death of The

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Research Paper Roberts 1

Sam Roberts

Instructor’s Name

Course Title

May 13, 2011

Moth, A Death of The

Virginia Woolf’s “ The Death of the Moth” has a very powerful and obvious tone and

meaning that shines through the rest of the text, and one that simply cannot be ignored,

much in the way that the later “Death of a Moth” has. I find that “ The Death of the Moth”

has a rather stagnant and passive tone, rather like Virginia herself in the story. The story

itself is simply an appreciation of the fact that almost every living thing on Earth makes

the most of its situation, as seen in the way the moth on her windowsill struggles against

itself to live and return to the monotony of circling her windows. It is a recounting of a

personal experience that depicts the slow descent into death.

I believe her point is that we, as humans don’t necessarily take advantage of the

opportunities given to us, as the moth appears to. She also observes the truly remark-

able thing abut life is the way it may seem so ordinary and unexciting, yet when we ob-

serve the passing of life on a much smaller, appreciable scale, it becomes something

truly marvelous. Here I think we can really see the, perhaps unintentional, symbolism

come into play. In literature moths, unsurprisingly, tend to represent night and sleep,




which in this case may be equated to death, which would make sense, given the nature

of the story.

While reading the story, I found that it evoked a strange feeling of solace and the

areas in which there was a great deal of movement or activity to be particularly re-

sounding, in particular, the description of the vast murder of crows that take off from the

fields on page 471. This is perhaps because of the way Virginia constructs a rather sub-

dued atmosphere around the description of the diurnal moth. It was at the climax of the

story that the atmosphere changed, from a rather lazy, if a bit gloomy afternoon, to a

much more bleak exploration of the concepts of life and death.

The story itself may also be an interpretation of her own creative process, with the

last line, “The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly

composed” being a reference to a work of art being “composed”, and therefore

completed. The reference in the beginning of the story to her working on a book, as she

gazes out the window is likely an allusion to this effect. As I see it, the moth’s initial vigor

and livelihood represent the initial conceptualization of an idea, the constant activity

alluding to the infancy of such a thought. When the moth settles on the windowsill, is

an implication to the settling of a though in one’s mind and its struggle to return to flight

being the efforts of one to retain the idea. The death of the moth in this case would

represent the creation of the idea.

The Moth’s struggle to stay alive may also be a much more subtle metaphor for

Woolf’s difficult childhood. The sudden death of her mother and father, and her nervous




breakdowns obviously left an unfading mark on her personality, a trait that I believe

shines through in this work.

Though it isn’t directly evidenced in the story, I believe that these factors are still

worthy of not and may, in fact be the primary inspiration for her writing the story in the

first place.

The moth may also be an allegory for mankind’s struggle to make sense of the

world around him, with death being the overwhelming world in which he lives. As we

see, man inevitably fails to fully comprehend what the world truly is.

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Moth, Death of The