FORUM DESCRIPTION
How does Woolf incorporate symbolism into her essay? What is her message in this
essay?
In order to earn full credit for this assignment, you must respond to the prompt in at
least 100 words and respond to two classmates in at least 50 words and you must use
standard English grammar. In your responses to classmates, say something
substantial; do not just say "I agree" or "I enjoyed reading this."
The Death of the Moth, and other essays, by Virginia Woolf
THE DEATH OF THE MOTH
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that
pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest
yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us.
They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own
species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured
wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life.
It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener
breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the
field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed
flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and
the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the
book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round
the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it
had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down
upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then,
suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time,
with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air
and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting
experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and
even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side
to side of his square of the window-pane. One could not help watching him. One
was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of
pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a
moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest
in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to
one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to
the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a
fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of
the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a
steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a
fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust
into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy
that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was
rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and
intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there
was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone
had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down
and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of
life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to
forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered
so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the
thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape
caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge
in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then,
looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but
seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of
the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on
other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking,
unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine,
that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of
its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge
and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness
of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could
no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil,
meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and
awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against
which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there?
Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and
quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off
to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the
same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in
particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay-coloured moth. It was
useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts
made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen,
have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings;
nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of
exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic
that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were
all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this
gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such
magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one
strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again,
useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of
death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The
struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked
at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean
an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes
before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay
most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death
is stronger than I am.
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