How Is Personification Used In Death Of The Moth

Virginia Woolf’s essay “ Death of the Moth” describes three very important elements that were presented throughout the essay. Without these elements, she would have never got her worries and suffering out to her readers about the inescapable death. She shows the ultimate power of death that lingers from creature to creature. Showing there is no escape from death, itself is unbeatable. The essay “ Death of a Moth used the devices, imagery, personification, and simile.

Imagery presents itself frequently through the essay. The first evidence of imagery presenting itself would be when Virginia Woolf said, “ They do not excite the 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.” The very beginning of this sentence shows us how the night presented itself in the very calm light by her using the pleasant night and how it was an autumn night. This all gives the reader a more calm feeling about the essay. Then she begins to paint a picture in the reader's mind when she starts to talk about the Ivy-blossom. The way she used imagery made us visualize what this plant looked like and the way it distracted her from her own thoughts.
The next picture Virginia Woolf painted the reader was when she said, “ With his narrow hay-colored wings” This gives us a clear picture of the moth. Without telling us directly and letting the reader picture whatever their minds come up with. Then Virginia Woolf began to explain the struggles of the moth fighting against the ultimate death that awaits for all walks of life. Virginia Woolf said, “ It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties, he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly.” By putting this into her essay, she lets the readers mind wonder in our own experiences of the thought of death in everyone's lives. Also, she becomes aware that this death that awaits the moth is coming close and shows her that death wins the fight the moth brought. How much watching a moth struggle for life is killing her because she also struggles with life.
Now with imagery, there comes personification and throughout the essay, personification is presented to add an even more significances to the events of death.

Virginia Woolf added human-like characteristics to personify life, death, and the moth's life. One way Virginia used personification was when she writes: “ Yet the power was all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay-colored moth.” Virginia gives the moth more human qualities and gives the reader a more sympathetic view of the moth. In retrospect, she used this device to compare her own suffering to the moths suffering. How she also struggles with life a death. She used the moth as a crutch to deal with her own emotional problems.

With personification comes simile, Virginia used simile quite frequently throughout her essay. For an example, “...until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of block knots in it had been cast up into the air; which after a few moment sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to knot at the end of it.” This presents simile by Virginia describing her window where the moth was and the gathering of rocks in the trees right past the moth. This also shows how she has distracted herself from the real problem. Of she cruising thoughts that are eating her

up.
When these three devices or elements: imagery, personification, and simile. Brings out the greater depth of the struggles in Virginia's’ life. These devices bring her struggles to life in the reader's mind. Which made her essay so powerful to the reader, These devices made things seem so real gives us a better understanding and connection to the author and the way she struggles with the thought of death. Without these devices, we wouldn’t have been the same story. Taking away the devices would have stolen the reader's imagination and would have stolen the power and connection between the reader and the writer.