Death Of The Moth Mood Essay

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Mood Change in “Death of the Moth”
Virginia Woolf’s “Death of the Moth” is a short story centered around the life and death of a moth on a beautiful day. Although the essay tells the story of the life a moth, many aspects of the piece such as its mood, can be mirrored to life in general. In the story, Virginia Woolf gradually changes the mood from an energetic and lively mood to a gloomy and quiet one through her use of active verbs, vivid imagery and varying sentence structure in order to accurately depict the darkness and ignominy of death.
One of the main ways that Virginia Woolf changes the mood, is the notable change in her choice of verbs. In the beginning of the story, she mostly uses verbs that convey a lot of motion and excitement such as “humped,” “bossed,” and “fluttering”. This serves to describe the livelihood and energetic feel of the beautiful day. Conversely, in the second half of the essay, most of the verbs used can be described as motionless and dull such as, “relaxed,” and “stood still.” …show more content…

This is most clearly illustrated by the huge contrast between the initial image of the beautiful field and the rather somber image of the field later on in the story. Woolf initially paints a very lively image of the field in paragraph one: “The rooks too were keeping their annual festivities; soaring around… The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, … sent the moth fluttering from side to side.” However, when she describes the death of the moth later on, Woolf paints a completely darker and more funereal image of the field: “Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The bird had taken themselves to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still.” The differences between these two images emphasize the sorrow and dreary environment that always accompanies

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