Comparison and Contrast of Thoreau and Woolf Both Henry David Thoreau’s “The Battle of the Ants” and Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” are about life and death, but they approach the topic with different perspectives. Thoreau writes about an exciting battle of ants and uses personification to relate it to the excitement of real human battles, while Woolf writes in respect about a moth who has death unexpectedly creep up on it and describes how little the moth is in comparison to the rest of life and how it fights to live. In both writings the ants and moth are fighting against death so that they may live, but the ants are fighting visible opponents that are trying to kill them and the moth is fighting natural death. Thoreau uses personification to show excitement and exhilaration over the battle of the ants and uses diction that describes the ants as if …show more content…
Woolf writes that the moth is flying back and forth on the window sill, but it has become stiff and awkward, so that it cannot fly across. The narrator watches the moth attempt to fly across the window sill seven times, but it always fails. The moth is in a battle against death and it keeps fighting a fight it cannot win against a fated outcome. The fact that the narrator takes the time to watch the moth repeatedly try to fly and fail, shows that the narrator is cheering for it to succeed. The narrator is not watching for the excitement or entertainment of battle like in the “The Battle of the Ants.” The narrator watches it because she admires and respects its will to live and fight honorably against death, because of this the narrator is more emotionally connected. The narrator shows pity for the dying moth and wants to help it by extending a pencil to help the moth right itself, but comes to the realization that this is the approach of death and nothing can be
Both Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard are extremely gifted writers. Virginia Woolf in 1942 wrote an essay called The Death of the Moth. Annie Dillard later on in 1976 wrote an essay that was similar in the name called The Death of a Moth and even had similar context. The two authors wrote powerful texts expressing their perspectives on the topic of life and death. They both had similar techniques but used them to develop completely different views. Each of the two authors incorporate in their text a unique way of adding their personal experience in their essay as they describe a specific occasion, time, and memory of their lives. Woolf’s personal experience begins with “it was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months” (Woolf, 1). Annie Dillard personal experience begins with “two summers ago, I was camping alone in the blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia” (Dillard, 1). Including personal experience allowed Virginia Woolf to give her own enjoyable, fulfilling and understandable perception of life and death. Likewise, Annie Dillard used the personal narrative to focus on life but specifically on the life of death. To explore the power of life and death Virginia Woolf uses literary tools such as metaphors and imagery, along with a specific style and structure of writing in a conversational way to create an emotional tone and connect with her reader the value of life, but ultimately accepting death through the relationship of a moth and a human. While Annie Dillard on the other hand uses the same exact literary tools along with a specific style and similar structure to create a completely different perspective on just death, expressing that death is how it comes. ...
Although Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman had different styles of writing, they did convey the same attitude and acceptance toward death. Both Dickinson’s “712” and Whitman’s “From “Song of Myself” poems showed death was something natural that had to happen and we need to accept it at a certain point in life. Both wrote poems about it as if it were no big deal, but something peaceful. Both poets used much imagery to convey this message very clear to their audience.
The inspiring documentary film, E.O. Wilson—Of Ants and Men, showcases biologist Edward Osborne Wilson’s passion for preserving the biodiversity of our natural world. E.O. Wilson not only values the fascinating creatures (particularly ants) that he comes across during his research and in his daily life, but he also takes action and participates in the Gorongosa Restoration Project at Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, Africa. The destruction of Gorongosa demonstrates the call for us—Homo sapiens—to realize how critical it is to concern ourselves with protecting the very ecosystems that have molded us into the complex species that we are; according to E.O. Wilson, “We adapted over millions of years to wild environments…We really need them” (CITE?). The better effort we make to understand that we are a part of this large, interdependent ecological community, the better equipped we become in not only being
By explaining in great detail about the flame and how the moth burned for two hours which gives the impression that day time shall never come. Dillard gets across to us the sudden flare of the moth as it first hits the flame, as if a “flame-faced virgin gone to god” as if it was a beautiful sight to see the moth burst up in flames.
Harton, Ron. "Henry Thoreau as a Model for Nature Writing." 9 August 2009. The Thoreau Reader. Online Document. 17 March 2014. .
While staying at Mel’s home, the adolescent female narrator personifies the butterfly paperweight. The life cycle begins with the narrator “hearing” the butterfly sounds, and believing the butterfly is alive. The butterfly mirrors the narrator’s feelings of alienation and immobility amongst her ‘new family’ in America. She is convinced the butterfly is alive, although trapped inside thick glass (le 25). The thick glass mirrors the image of clear, still water. To the adolescent girl, the thick glass doesn’t stop the sounds of the butterfly from coming through; however, her father counteracts this with the idea of death, “…can’t do much for a dead butterfly” (le 31). In order to free the butterfly, the narrator throws the disk at a cabinet of glass animals, shattering the paperweight, as well as the glass animals. The shattering of the glass connects to the shattering of her being, and her experience in fragility. The idea of bringing the butterfly back to life was useless, as the motionless butterfly laid there “like someone expert at holding his breath or playing dead” (le 34). This sense of rebirth becomes ironic as the butterfly did not come back to life as either being reborn or as the manifestation of a ghostly spirit; instead its cyclic existence permeates through the narrator creating a transformative
There are many short stories in literature that share a common theme presented in different ways. A theme that always keeps readers’ attention is that of death because it is something that no one wants to face in real life, but something that can be easily faced when reading. “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both exemplify how two authors use a common theme of death to stand as a metaphor for dystopian societies.
The relationship between life and death is explored in Woolf’s piece, “The Death of a Moth.” Woolf’s own epiphany is presented in her piece; she invites her reader, through her stylistic devices, to experience the way in which she realized what the meaning of life and death meant to her. Woolf’s techniques allow her audience to further their own understanding of death and encourages them consider their own existence.
He uses imagery to show how complicated people make life; how much of life is unnecessary. In turn, it evokes emotional responses from the readers. An example is, “ Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “what’s the news?” as if the rest of man kind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night‘s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe”-- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.” (page 278). In this part of the text Thoreau explains the life of a man. In the end however, it turns into a sorrowful ending. What Thoreau was trying to say in this part of the text is that people could go experience things themselves instead of listening to stories. Instead of staying home and asking what is happening with the world, you could experience it yourself and that it is unnecessary to hear the stories in the
Woolf’s writing in “The Death of the Moth” is focused on the essence of vitality describing the moth as, “a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down feathers, had set it dancing and sig-zagging to show us the true nature of life,” whereas Thoreau’s writing in “The Battle of the Ants” focuses on the exhilaration of the conflict that slowly tappers off as the red ant “with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg… after half an hour or more, he...” “…divest himself of…” the black
Death is often displayed in literature, showing how people would react towards it. Whether it's in "The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin, "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, or even "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield, death appears to be unavoidable. Although these are different short stories, death is applied, but the author's interpretations differentiate.
The MOTH has a variety of stories to tell from comedy to drama, short or long, with an inspirational message or just a story to make you laugh. The stories have vivid details so
Subsequently, the spider, “holding up a moth” draws out the evil or cruelty, which is nature. Frost accents this in the subsequent verse, “Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth” (Frost, 593). His play on words here is prodigious, “a white piece of satin cloth” (Frost, 593) this stanza demonstrates ...
The Theme of Death in Poetry Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson are two Modern American Poets who consistently wrote about the theme of death. While there are some comparisons between the two poets, when it comes to death as a theme, their writing styles were quite different. Robert Frost’s poem, “Home Burial,” and Emily Dickinson’s poems, “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” and “I died for Beauty,” are three poems concerning death. While the theme is constant there are differences as well as similarities between the poets and their poems. The obvious comparison between the three poems is the theme of death.
The use of how nature affects them and their love for nature brings me to that conclusion. So what makes these pieces so powerful? Really, it's not the reasoning between life and death; it's the comparison of how other living things on Earth that we take for granted are similar to us as a human race. When these two poets look at a flower or a sunset, they see more than just a pretty flower or a beautiful sunset; they see what life is made up of, which is wonderful at times and ugly at other times. Like the saying goes, you can't have good without evil.