Death of the Moth

Theodore Silva

The Death of the Moth Essay

Death is the end of the life of a person or an organism. And death is continually being used as subjects or main topics of major works. In Virginia Woolf’s The Death of the Moth, the author is focusing on the natural death of a moth. In Alexander Petrunkevich’s The Spider and the Wasp the subject of the work is the death of a tarantula by a wasp. Although both aim to bring to the light the matter of death, they do so through different ways. They both show the reader the inability of any person or creature to overcome death yet do so from different points of views. In Woolf’s essay she begins to identify herself with the moth, beginning to have feelings toward the experience, giving it a somber tone with slow pacing, yet in Petrunkevich’s work, he turns death into a process giving it an informational tone.

Woolf’s tone in The Death of the Moth focuses on her own personal experience with death resulting in additional information, ultimately giving the essay a slower pace than normal. The reader begins to see the emotion from Woolf towards the moth when she proclaims, “One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him” (2) as it pertains to his limited time to enjoy his opportunities. This sense of pity beginning to grow in the author and in the reader soon becomes the start of the personal viewpoint of Woolf. The fact that Woolf constantly adds her own comments and emotions after the actions of the moth gives her the ability to give the reader details about the “death of the moth” and insert her own viewpoints. When Woolf informs the reader that the moth “was trying to resume his dancing” (4) she soon inserts “I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking…” (4) Furthermore, Woolf’s description of the moth “fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill,” (4) is followed by “The helplessness of his attitude roused me.” (4) She is able to display to the reader not only what actually...