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Woolf and Thoreau: The Observations
Insects may be the bane of some people’s existence, but the creatures are truly strong globes of energy, going about their lives, flitting to and fro. Thoreau and Woolf both captured this essential spirit in their writing. In “Battle of the Ants” and “The Death of the Moth,” both writers observe other life forms, but the way in which they perceive the insects struggles vastly differs. According to an online biography, Thoreau’s exposure to transcendentalism as well as his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson both shaped his writing to emphasize “the importance of empirical thinking and of spiritual matters over the physical world,” whereas Virginia Woolf’s parents raised her to be free thinking which resulted
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As stated in an online biography, Virginia Woolf’s life started out normally, she was born into a privileged English household with her three full and four half siblings and was raised by her well to do parents. Both of her parents “were extremely well connected, both socially and artistically” (Virginia Woolf Biography). Although her brothers went to college at Cambridge, her sisters, as well as Woolf herself, were schooled at home with access to an extensive Victorian library. Her open-minded parents brought her up to look at things from a different angle, rather than the straight forward route. Virginia Woolf is one of the few authors that uses the stream of consciousness writing style which immerses the reader in the text. In the case of “The Death of the Moth,” Woolf starts on a normal level, describing the “pleasant morning, mid-September”, and then dials in solely on the moth, to the point where one can visualize the energy the moth emits (Woolf). Not only that, but her stories, such as Mrs. Dalloway, raised awareness for controversial topics such as feminism, mental illness, and homosexuality. Because of her parents’ open mindedness, she was able to learn about a variety of topics while studying at home and form independent, non-socially influenced thoughts, which she later developed into her …show more content…
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
In the next essay, "On societies as organisms," Thomas points out that the writers of books on insect behavior go to great lengths to distinguish the uniqueness of insect life.
The essay The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf, is a piece of literature that describes the physical struggle of a dying moth and also, an inner struggle that the writer is experiencing as well. Through these struggles that each of the characters in the story endures, the audience sees a connection through both subjects. Analyzing and describing this complex essay structure can be done by evaluating the meaning and metaphors used by the author to portray the message of the story, which will allow the audience to comprehend what the true meaning of the essay is and come to understand the lesson of the story.
Born into completely different situations at completely different times in history you may think that Socrates and Virginia Woolf may have a very different idea about the concept of freedom. Socrates was never able to experience freedom of religion which every American knows as a basic right given by the constitution. Woolf on the other hand was given just a glance at women’s equality and only because of her financial stability. While both Socrates and Woolf knew that they weren’t given a fair chance at freedom they both wanted to let others understand what they were going through so that when change happened, which they both knew it would, people could look back on the past and conceptualize about how far the world has come. So really the question
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
Virginia Woolf automatically established her credibility before the audience would read the essay. Woolf is a public figure in the London literary society. She had written Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One’s Own, and more before “The Death of a Moth.” Since she herself had several mental illnesses, the audience already familiarized themselves with her style of writing and personal connections between her pieces of writing and her bipolar disorder. Then, Woolf acknowledged the counter argument and refuted it in order to appeal to her logical reasoning. When she noticed the moth was having difficulties raising himself up, she “stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, [but] it came over [her] that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. [She] laid the pencil down again” (2). She stated that the counter argument in which one should help those during their weak states, but she refuted by stating that in the face of death, one cannot avoid the end result. She also employed the appeal to emotions in her short essay. The vivid description of the moth’s actions allow the readers to feel an emotional connection with it and Woolf. For example, Woolf mentioned that “after perhaps a seventh attempt [the moth] slipped from the wooden ledge and feel, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused [her]” (2). The audience will be able to also feel the emotions Woolf had towards
She does this through simply telling a good story. This perhaps show that Virginia Woolf may have been fond of Walker's work. Woolf chooses to clearly state and agree with the same points Walker makes and shows the ideas in a different light because indeed she is a different person with different attributes. This shows up dominantly in her rewriting of Walker's "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens."
“Hornet” is a free verse poem that shows the honest relationship between the manmade world, the house, and the natural
Following the death of her father in 1904, Woolf moved with her sister and two brothers to the house in Bloomsbury. Vanessa, a painter, agreed to marry the critic of art and literature Clive Bell. Virginia's economic situation improved when she inherited £2,500 from an aunt. Their house become central to activities of the Bloomsbury group. "And part of the charm of those Thursday evenings was that they were astonishingly abstract. It was not only that Moore's book [Principia Ethica, 1903] had set us all discussing philosophy, art, religion; it was that the atmosphere - if in spite of Hawtrey I may use that word - was abstract in the extreme.
He uses diction that describes the ants as if they are warriors on the battlefield fighting for some cause. He uses the term battlefield, which is normally contributed to where two human armies or military forces engage each other and fight for some principle or political reason. He also says, “I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for…” Thoreau refers to red ants as the “red republicans” and the black ants as the black imperialist. He wondered if they had military bands playing their nations’ songs. He gives the red ants a battle cry: “Conquer or die.” He compares the battle to the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill in the American Revolutionary War. He believes that the red ants are fighting for independence and liberty from the larger and more powerful black ants, the imperialist. Thoreau is virtually making the ants human by giving them nations, organized armies, bands, battle cries, political sides, and principles. All of these characteristics are of human nature and society, not characteristics belonging to ants. On the other hand the narrator of “The Death of the Moth” thought that it would be unfortunate “…to have only a moth’s part in life…” She then calls the opportunities of the moth pathetic. She thinks this because the moth is so small in comparison to the rest of life and is tiny compared to the power of death. Woolf acknowledges that the moth is
The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday
“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” (Poe 145) Although Shakespeare antecedes Poe, the two poets use poetic devices in their poetic manuscripts. Works of poetry have poetic devices that intensifies a story; with added intensification, it makes the poem unique. In analyzing the two poets, William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe, one can remark that the two use similar and contradictory poetic devices in their writings.
Virginia Woolf, formerly known as Adeline Virginia Stephen was born January 5, 1882, in London, England. Woolf ended her life at the age of fifty-nine near Rodmell, England, on March 28, 1941. Woolf was known as a popular victorian novelist, her most popular novels were, To the Lighthouse, and Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf struggled a lot emotionally after the death of her mother, in 1895, then to make matters worse her half sister died in 1897. Woolf does not talk in detail about these tragic events, for it burdens her heart. The majority of Woolf's writings are based off events that have occurred in her life prior. Woolf educated herself by attending classes at the ladies
In Cunnigham’s The Hours, Virginia Woolf, through Cunnigham’s interpretation, is a character that is fascinated by mortality. In each event she experiences in the novel, she evaluates how she feels about living, and constantly considers suicide as a way to escape her oppressive life. One of these moments occurs when she is attending a “funeral” for a dead bird with her sister’s children. Although the reader knows that Virginia will eventually commit suicide, the “funeral” scene is an important character revelation because it reveals that at this point in the novel, Virginia was not ready to take her own life; and unfortunately, the film misses this important aspect of her character by condensing this scene.
The Hawk In The Rain, the first poem in Ted Hughes’s first book of poetry published in 1957, describes the struggle of man on the earth and “a binary opposition between earth and air (Easthope, 189)”. Many of hughes’s poems including The Hawk in the Rain stand for “an intense experience of an external object (Easthope, 189)”. As the narrator drags himself through the mud, he is subject to harsh weather, heavy rain, and the earth itself, which is compared to a grave, grimly observing that the mud might swallow him whole as the hawk soars above. The earth is personified in the metaphor comparing it to a mouth and the narrator’s description of himself as a “morsel.” The hawk in flight is immune to the struggle, yet the narrator perceives that it is watching as in the alliteration, “effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.” The narrator clearly covets the hawk’s steady vantage point and its will, he wants the capability and power that the hawk posses. The hawk represents the ideal of self-control for the graceless, stumbling and besieged narrator (Bentley, 15). He observers the...
Romanticism in poetic works centers around the idea that humankind is able to find peace and solace with the natural world. While Romantic writers often describe nature as a beautiful paradise, the wilderness can also be dangerous. In the poem A Bird Came Down the Walk, Emily Dickinson illustrates the juxtaposition between the civilized society of man and the behavior of animals in the natural world. The speaker of the poem is seen observing a bird feeding on its prey, while the small creature remains unaware of it spectator. However, once the speaker has been discovered, the bird is frightened and flies away. This encounter between the human and the bird demonstrates Dickinson’s attempt to convey the differences that exist between nature and mankind. Dickinson incorporates the use of vivid imagery and figurative language to describe the behavior of creatures found in the natural world. These literary devices, alongside the word choice and tone the writer uses in the poem, serve to emphasize the theme of humankind’s alienation from nature due to the ignorance in man’s conception of superiority.