Life And Death In Virginia Woolf's The Death Of The Moth

In “The death of the moth”, Virginia Woolf explores the value of creative process in life providing survival out of tragedy or suffering. Her conventional narration of one’s personal experience depicts the battle between life and death which is both pathetic and dignified—pathetic since death will always strike inescapably and dignified when the moth dies quietly by her commenting on the moth that “having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed”(Death of the Moth). The cycle of the moth’s life and death is symbol of creative process that her personal narration brings about works of the nature of human being: the happiness and suffering, one’s own deepest desire and anxiety.

She reveals that the moth has the passionate desire to live. She used a word choice of “superb,” and “gigantic effort” in order to illustrate the moth puts [his] enormous effort despite his “helplessness” and “awkwardness” when facing death. Woolf describes moth’s struggle as “marvelous as well as pathetic” and it conveys the idea that no matter how hard one fights against the approach of death, it is overpowering of all creatures. The Death of the Moth seems to criticize on the oppression of men or prevalence of masculinity in society where caused the struggles of women at that time. The battle against death is related to the movement that Virginia Woolf had pursued, becoming a feminist, where she was sexually abused by her half-brother which played a part to aware of herself as a woman. The relationship between life and death in our lives reveals Woolf’s belief that she tried to induce the reader to lead to the conception of the power of death. Throughout the essay, the death was described in many different ways. The essay start...

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...vere mental illness throughout her life, what is termed now bipolar disorder. In her essay, “Old Mrs. Grey”, it is noticeably true that she used her own symbol as it was deployed in the character of Mrs. Grey, who was seized with melancholia and hoping to suicide herself to be with her own families who went on a trip without return. In the story of “Old Mrs. Grey”, Woolf depressively used words to describe a lonely ninety-two years old woman whose task was only to look through the door at the life outside of it, “the morning spread seven food by four, green and sunny” (Old Mrs. Grey). Woolf also illustrates her argument that how Mrs/ Grey’s life has become full of nothingness and she only hopes her days to end. Regarding life and death in this essay, Woolf regards life could not meet the end even though one asked for, instead one that he or she must suffer through.