In Annie Dillard’s essay, “Holy the Firm,” the author starts out by saying she lives on northern Puget Sound alone. She talks about a spider in her bathroom and the hollow bugs on the bathroom flow. Then she talks about her past summer where she camped alone in the mountains in Virginia. She geared up to read about a novel that made her want to become a writer when she was sixteen. She was hoping that reading the novel again would allow her to get that same feeling as before. So she read every day under a tree by a candle. Moths would fly into the candle, and one night a moth flew into a candle and got caught. Dillard noticed a “golden female moth” flapped into the fire and stuck (Dillard 6-7). Dillard continues on with the metaphor of the burning moth. By making this metaphor, Dillard talks about death. When you hear the word death, you might picture someone dying and that it just ends there. However, Dillard’s metaphor about death was not negative. In the text she states, “She burned for two hours without changing, without …show more content…
bending or leaning-only glowing within” (Dillard 6). This states that even after death, the moth did not change but only glowed. She also compares this glowing to a “building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls” (Dillard 6). Here, Dillard asserts that death does not just end. Even after death, the moth’s glow still served as a purpose. The death can be seen as another beginning. A moment when nature and the natural world became meaningful to me was when I went hiking in the summer with my family.
I went hiking to Crystal Mountain in Washington. There is a gondola lift that provides access to the resort’s summit. The gondola lift goes from the base area all the way up to the top. At the top, you can see a spectacular view of a mountain called Mount Rainier. You can also hike up and down the mountain, or ride the gondola up and hike down and vice versa.
On the way up, my family and I rode the gondola. On the way up from the gondola, you slowly see everything getting smaller as you get higher. Once we got higher, I saw a lot of trees and some snow on the ground. As soon as you get off of the gondola, you are greeted with the wind and then the spectacular view of Mount Rainier. I have been to Mount Rainer, and I always see it from far away when I drive to places. But seeing it up front was really
different. The personal meaning of this moment is mainly from the experience, rather than the remarkable view. Instead of taking the gondola back down, we decided to hike down. This was my first time hiking, so it was a new experience for me. During the hike, it was long and I did slip and fall a few times. Nevertheless, the process of hiking down and seeing the nature along the way was quite refreshing. We did consider quitting and go take the gondola back down. However, we didn’t and the satisfaction of finishing the hike was priceless. I was sore for a few days, but it reminded me of my accomplishment of my first hike down a mountain. From this, it opened my viewpoint towards nature more. I thought all there was to do in Washington was go in the city, but now I see that there is more. All in all, I’ve discovered a new perspective on nature from this experience. This experience has allowed me to have a new perspective on nature. It has allowed me to open my eyes to something new. In my case, I did not have an antipathy towards nature, or have an appreciation for it either. To me, nature was something that was just there. I did not have a certain interest towards it. However, from this recent experience, I became interested in nature and realized my appreciation for it. Before, I did not care about the landscapes and only had my focus on the city with shopping malls and food places. Now, I would rather go look at the landscapes and explore the environment. When I look at nature, I can see the beauty in it. I also feel relaxed and refreshed, something I cannot feel when in the city. I have realized that appreciation takes some time. I would say our place in the natural world is to simply enjoy nature while we can. Once you experience that moment, it truly changes your perspective not just on nature, but on life also.
In the “Interior Life”, Annie Dillard discusses the minds process of realizing the difference between imagination and reality. Dillard begins her narrative by recounting the childhood memory of an oblong shaped light that invaded her room every night, terrorizing her with the possibility of death. Beginning at the door of her bedroom this “oblong light” quickly slid across the wall, continued to the headboard of her little sister Amy’s bed and suddenly disappeared with a loud roar. Oftentimes it returned, noisily fading away just before seizing her, meanwhile Amy slept, blissfully unaware. Continuing on, Dillard describes the unforgettable discovery of the connection between the noise the oblong light made and the sound of the passing cars
Most writers love to pick the topic of life and death as they are the mystifying kind of things that always make human left wondering. In Annie Dillard’s essay, “The Death of a Moth”, she heavily puts her focus towards the moth’s behavior when dying. Readers generally would think that she is a different type of author to write four pages of essay talking about moths. Also, she mentions lots of details about the variety of bugs in her bathroom which somehow is disturbing to some people when reading this essay for the first time. Moths that die seem very insignificant and quite straightforward. However, if we take the initiative to delve into her piece, we could see the hidden meaning behind the death of the moths. Her interaction with moths
"Mount Rainier Introduction." National Park Services U.S. Department of Interior. Nps.gov, 27 Dec. 2004. Web. 6 Feb. 2010. .
The moths help illustrate a sense of spirituality in this short story. Abuelita, the grandmother, uses old remedies which stem from a religious/spiritual nature to cure physical illnesses such as scarlet fever and other infirmities. Her granddaughter is very disrespectful and doubtful of the medicines which her grandmother used, but they always work. The granddaughter tells us that "Abuelita made a balm out of dried moth wings . . . [to] shape my hands back to size" (Viramontes 1239). In this way the granddaughter begins to accept the spiritual belief and hope.
While Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” and Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” both use animals as a symbol of life to share their viewpoint of life, Woolf uses sad and sympathetic tone and usual description of a typical autumn morning and Dillard uses cheerful and positive tone and almost dreamlike description of a beautiful summer evening to convey that people should live their lives the way they choose, since death is inevitable anyway.
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. ...
Dillard refers to the corpses of the moths beneath the spider web in her bathroom for the 16 years she had quit writing as if it was the death of her writing as the moths died to the spider.
In the first instance, death is portrayed as a “bear” (2) that reaches out seasonally. This is then followed by a man whom “ comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse / / to buy me…” This ever-changing persona that encapsulates death brings forth a curiosity about death and its presence in the living world. In the second stanza, “measles-pox” (6) is an illness used to portray death’s existence in a distinctive embodiment. This uncertainty creates the illusion of warmth and welcomenesss and is further demonstrated through the reproduction of death as an eminent figure. Further inspection allows the reader to understand death as a swift encounter. The quick imagery brought forth by words such as “snaps” and “shut” provoke a sense of startle in which the audience may dispel any idea of expectedness in death’s coming. This essential idea of apparent arrival transitions to a slower, foreseeable fate where one can imagine the enduring pain experienced “an iceberg between shoulder blades” (line 8). This shift characterizes the constant adaptation in appearance that death acquires. Moreover, the idea of warmth radiating from death’s presence reemerges with the introduction to a “cottage of darkness” (line 10), which to some may bring about a feeling of pleasantry and comfort. It is important to note that line 10 was the sole occurrence of a rhetorical question that the speaker
After a great night of sleep we headed out to the world renown mountain of Jackson Hole. It is known for being the steepest mountain on which a ski resort is set up. It is also know for having a great view of Grand Teton, one of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains. We could not have asked for a better day of riding. there was a fresh 14” of snow under our boards and after a little bit of exploring we found some great out of bounds and woods riding.
The subject of death is one that many have trouble talking about, but Virginia Woolf provides her ideas in her narration The Death of the Moth. The moth is used as a metaphor to depict the constant battle between life and death, as well as Woolf’s struggle with chronic depression. Her use of pathos and personification of the moth helps readers develop an emotional connection and twists them to feel a certain way. Her intentional use of often awkward punctuation forces readers to take a step back and think about what they just read. Overall, Woolf uses these techniques to give her opinion on existence in general, and reminds readers that death is a part of life.
...e describing a sort of spiritual death, since she talks about the fly cutting her off form the light, which could represent God. This interpretation has some difficulties, however, since family members probably would not be present during a spiritual death. (Dickinson 1146)
There is probably no one, among people, who has not considered death as a subject to think about or the events, people, and spirits that they would face after death. Also, since we were little kids, we were asking our parents what death is and what is going to happen after we die. People have always linked death with fear, darkness, depression, and other negative feelings, but not with Emily Dickinson, a reclusive poet from Massachusetts who was obsessed with death and dying in her tons of writings. She writes “Because I could not stop for Death” and in this particular poem she delivers a really different idea of death and the life after death. In the purpose of doing that, the speaker encounters death, which was personalized to be in the form of a gentleman suitor who comes to pick her up with his horse-drawn carriage for a unique death date that will last forever.
Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young. This allowed her to spend her time writing and lamenting, instead of seeking out a husband or a profession. Eventually, she limited her outside activities to going to church. In her early twenties, she began prayed and worshipped on her own. This final step to total seclusion clearly fueled her obsession with death, and with investigating the idea of an afterlife. In “Because I could not stop for Death”, Dickinson rides in a carriage with the personification of Death, showing the constant presence of death in her life. Because it has become so familiar, death is no longer a frightening presence, but a comforting companion. Despite this, Dickinson is still not above fear, showing that nothing is static and even the most resolute person is truly sure of anything. This point is further proven in “I heard a Fly buzz”, where a fly disrupts the last moment of Dickinson’s life. The fly is a symbol of death, and of uncertainty, because though it represents something certain—her impending death—it flies around unsure with a “stumbling buzz”. This again illustrates the changing nature of life, and even death. “This World is not Conclusion” is Dickinson’s swan song on the subject of afterlife. She confirms all her previous statements, but in a more r...
Throughout Edgar Allan Poe’s life, death was a frequent visitor to those he loved around him. When Poe was only 3 years old, his loving mother died of Tuberculosis. Because Poe’s father left when he was an infant, he was now an orphan and went to live with the Allan’s. His stepmother was very affectionate towards Edgar and was a very prominent figure in his life. However, years later she also died from Tuberculosis, leaving Poe lonely and forlorn. Also, later on, when Poe was 26, he married his cousin 13-year-old Virginia, whom he adored. But, his happiness did not last long, and Virginia also died of Tuberculosis, otherwise known as the Red Death, a few years later. After Virginia’s death, Poe turned to alcohol and became isolated and reckless. Due to Edgar Allan Poe’s loss of those he cared for throughout his life, Poe’s obsession with death is evident in his works of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, in which in all three death is used to produce guilt.
One of the ideas that poets use in literature is the thought of immortality, something that cannot be control in real life but in fiction it can be As Emily Dickinson proves it in the stanza ‘’because I could not stop from death he kindly stop from me ‘’ (lit anthology) what she point out that even when least expected death can happen whether or not you are ready to depart from the world. In the poem the narrator is a dead woman that tell her process of dying she indicate her wish to live longer to live an eternal-life by using metaphor to show that death is just process of life that it cannot be stop from coming to you . In the second stanza Dickinson also uses simile to compare the act of death as a man seducing her ...