21 pages • 42 minutes read
Virginia WoolfThe Death of the Moth
Fiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Nature
Nature is the source of inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s keen observations and musings. The natural world offers a stream of new information, the “vigorous” field outside being so majestic that Woolf fails to pay attention to her reading material (Paragraph 1). The essay takes place on a mid-September morning. The seasons are given contrasting, distinctive natures—with this cool, lively morning having “a keener breath than that of the summer months” (Paragraph 1). The autumnal atmosphere foreshadows the day moth’s death as fall and winter are associated with the completion of the Earth’s annual cycle. In choosing to focus on a window containing a beautiful image of nature, Woolf suggests that nature itself is the medium through which life and death battle each other.
The grandeur of the pastoral scene is contrasted with the moth’s flight: “In spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky,” the moth is stuck to the window (Paragraph 2). The window pane is the creature’s entire universe. Nature’s expansiveness is made all the more magnificent when compared to the moth’s flight and the window’s four corners. Nature is far too grand to be concerned with such a small event as it will continue regardless; the process of decay is “indifferent, impersonal,” unconcerned with the moth’s suffering (Paragraph 5). Woolf emphasizes nature’s cyclical quality via contrasting states of activity and rest. In the final scene, the natural world is quiet, lapsed into a mid-afternoon torpor as the moth dies. The placement of the moth within the confines of a home, the window, as opposed to the outdoors suggests that nature itself is grand, holistic, and never dies; individual creatures, by necessity of the natural process of never-ending change, are destined to decay and wither.
Life and Death
The contrast between the day moth and night moth highlights the difference between life and death. In comparing the two moths, Woolf links the day moth to life; however, the day moth is given a more mundane character than its counterpart. This suggests that death comprises the unknown. As Woolf continues to observe the moth, its monotonous flight is transformed into a heroic activity—as this fluttering is the only activity available and meaningful to it. She sees beauty in the moth’s desire to do despite its limitations. Fascinated, she invests his movements with importance, imagining that someone took “a tiny bead of pure life...[and] set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life” (Paragraph 3). Woolf suggests that life is represented by activity regardless of purpose. The moth’s energetic and pointless flight reads as authentic because the moth cannot pretend to be anything more than what it is. It is life made bare. Woolf reflects on how humans “forget all about life,” taking for granted both the multitude of natural life surrounding them as well as life beyond material concerns (Paragraph 3).
Woolf sympathizes with the moth’s growing desperation, as it slowly dawns on her that its “futile attempts” are “the approach of death” (Paragraph 4). Death is characterized as an “oncoming doom,” a limitless force that descends upon the moth (Paragraph 5). Though Woolf has greater consciousness than the moth, she is unable to help him avoid his fate and can only sit and observe. Death is connected to rest and sleep, the horses outside being described as “still” and “quiet” in the moth’s final moment (Paragraph 5). Death is also given power equal to nature’s own, as Woolf connects death with natural disasters—using imagery of cities submerged in water and mass destruction to emphasize her point. She realizes that death unites all creatures as all are mortal: The most complex of creatures (humans) and the lowliest (day moths) alike are conquered by it in due time.
The Mechanical Versus the Natural
The bored narrator notes her reading material, the plough outside her window, and the “romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea” (Paragraph 2). She also mentions the pencil that she is using to write. The inclusion of mechanical objects and references to human labor provide a stark contrast with the organic world of nature. The former is framed as less intriguing than the natural world, where creatures exist without human burdens. The moth is a representative of pure nature, a life that is instinctual and playful. The narrator’s world is more mechanized and, in a sense, less vibrant because it is “cumbered” with extraneous dignity (Paragraph 3). Woolf argues that human exertions, which are invested with far more importance than a moth’s flight, are far less lofty than imagined. She hints at the life of a mere moth being equally important to that of a human, because death brings all things to an end regardless of status.
When the moth stops moving and struggles to fly again, Woolf expects him to “resume his flight, as one waits for a machine” (Paragraph 4). Despite being mistaken, she quickly recognizes its suffering. This false assumption highlights the key difference between dead matter (such as machines, books, ploughs, and ships) and living matter—which is a part of nature and must die. The narrator knows that human effort cannot prevent death; she watches the creature die and “lifted the pencil again, useless though [she] knew it to be” (Paragraph 5). Not only can she not help him, but she feels that her interference in his death would interrupt the natural process and deny the moth’s dignity in its final moments of life.
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By Virginia Woolf
