Virginia Woolf
The Death of the Moth, and other essays
THE DEATH OF THE MOTH
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that 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. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay–coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare–backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window–pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far–off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig–zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window–pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay–coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
From "Death of a Moth"
by Annie Dillard
One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when the shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspread, flapped into the fire, drooped abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, and frazzled in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, like angels' wings, enlarging the circle of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine; at once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Her head was a hole lost to time. All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax---a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's round pool.
And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the shattered hole where her head should have been, and widened into a flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like an immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side. The moth's head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.
She burned for two hours without changing, without swaying or kneeling---only glowing within, like a boiling fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brain in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet.
So. That is why I think those hollow shreds on the bathroom floor are moths. I believe I know what moths look like, in any state.
I have three candles here on the table which I disentangle from the plants and light when visitors come. The cats avoid them, though Small’s tail caught fire once. I rubbed it out before she noticed. I don’t mind living alone. The only time I mind being alone is when something is funny, when I am laughing at something funny, I wish someone were around. Sometimes I think it is pretty funny that I sleep alone.
1. DICTION: Compare and contrast the way both writers describe the death of the moth? What are some of the key phrases and details that create a vivid picture of the moth’s “violent” death in the mind of the reader?
2. TONE: How would you describe the tone of these pieces? Consider the impact the death of the moth has upon both the narrator and the reader.
3. STRUCTURE/ENDING: How does each author develop the theme of her essay? What is the effect on the reader of the final paragraphs of each essay? How do we react to violence and death in nature? Why does the death of this seemingly insignificant insect evoke such strong feelings in the narrators?
In a well-developed essay, compare and contrast Virginia Woolf’s and Annie Dillard’s essays by discussing diction, tone, and structure? Are there noticeable differences in the rhetorical strategies each author employs to convey her theme?
What do you think of this essay?
2.
The descriptions of the two moths present a polar image of Woolf’s moth being futile, while Dillard’s is glorious and inspiring. “He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed.” Woolf describes her moth as stiff and awkward, thereby using classic adjectives of old age and infirmity. She does this to show how close the moth is to death, and how the moth is powerless to stop death’s strength. This is Woolf appealing to her reader’s logic because in her mind, death is close no matter the age. She cedes this description of the moth seeming aged to relate to the reader that the moth is close to death as all living things are—at least according to Woolf. “A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire.” Dillard’s diction constructs the moth as a glorious creature. She uses the word golden to connote worth, but, also, to tie into the idea of ever burning candles of passion that she eludes to at the end of her essay. Dillard’s descriptions of the moth seem better suited to a bird than an actual moth, which seems to add to the moth’s importance and weight. Dillard uses these details to insinuate that the moth is something more than an insect, more glamorous like a bird. Dillard helps the reader conclude that the moth is more than a trivial insect, and is therefore capable of holding the emotional and passionate weight that the moth represents. This is a logical description of the moth because Dillard cannot assign the inspirational weight to the moth that she does unless it is isolated from normal moths and made better than those same moths.
2, continued
The moth’s death as described by each author, paints the vibrancy of a passionate life for Dillard, and the stoic release from a futile life for Woolf. “The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over.” Woolf is not explicitly clear whether the struggle is the moth’s inability to right himself or if it is the struggle of living or fighting against the inevitability of death. Her details center on describing “a relaxing release from life.” She ambiguously uses the word struggle to be used in the larger picture of her argument. Woolf uses an emotional appeal to the reader in the moth’s death by trying to paint death as a relaxing release that ends the struggle of a feeble existence. “Dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled and fried in a second... and then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning.” In this detail, Dillard uses the sentence structure of successive, alliterative verbs to quicken the rhythm of the piece and articulate the spontaneity and inspiration of life. With these details, Dillard talks much about the nature of her moth. Dillard’s moth is glorious, spontaneous, and transcendent of time. Dillard uses the moth-candle to invoke a diatribe on her views of inspiration, which is effectively what her moth is. Even after the death of an idea, Dillard writes, its effects are not lost, they keep on burning. Even before this moth-candle is lit, she describes the moth flying into the flame quickly. It is not so much important that the moth dies, but that it lives energetically and vibrantly as a golden creature that swoops down at a whim into a fire and blazes forever.
The Death of the Moth, and other essays
THE DEATH OF THE MOTH
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that 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. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay–coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare–backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window–pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far–off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig–zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window–pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay–coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
From "Death of a Moth"
by Annie Dillard
One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when the shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspread, flapped into the fire, drooped abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, and frazzled in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, like angels' wings, enlarging the circle of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine; at once the light contracted again and the moth's wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time, her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burnt away and her heaving mouthparts cracked like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Her head was a hole lost to time. All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax---a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle's round pool.
And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth's body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the shattered hole where her head should have been, and widened into a flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like an immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two winding flames of identical light, side by side. The moth's head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.
She burned for two hours without changing, without swaying or kneeling---only glowing within, like a boiling fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brain in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet.
So. That is why I think those hollow shreds on the bathroom floor are moths. I believe I know what moths look like, in any state.
I have three candles here on the table which I disentangle from the plants and light when visitors come. The cats avoid them, though Small’s tail caught fire once. I rubbed it out before she noticed. I don’t mind living alone. The only time I mind being alone is when something is funny, when I am laughing at something funny, I wish someone were around. Sometimes I think it is pretty funny that I sleep alone.
1. DICTION: Compare and contrast the way both writers describe the death of the moth? What are some of the key phrases and details that create a vivid picture of the moth’s “violent” death in the mind of the reader?
2. TONE: How would you describe the tone of these pieces? Consider the impact the death of the moth has upon both the narrator and the reader.
3. STRUCTURE/ENDING: How does each author develop the theme of her essay? What is the effect on the reader of the final paragraphs of each essay? How do we react to violence and death in nature? Why does the death of this seemingly insignificant insect evoke such strong feelings in the narrators?
In a well-developed essay, compare and contrast Virginia Woolf’s and Annie Dillard’s essays by discussing diction, tone, and structure? Are there noticeable differences in the rhetorical strategies each author employs to convey her theme?
What do you think of this essay?
2.
The descriptions of the two moths present a polar image of Woolf’s moth being futile, while Dillard’s is glorious and inspiring. “He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed.” Woolf describes her moth as stiff and awkward, thereby using classic adjectives of old age and infirmity. She does this to show how close the moth is to death, and how the moth is powerless to stop death’s strength. This is Woolf appealing to her reader’s logic because in her mind, death is close no matter the age. She cedes this description of the moth seeming aged to relate to the reader that the moth is close to death as all living things are—at least according to Woolf. “A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire.” Dillard’s diction constructs the moth as a glorious creature. She uses the word golden to connote worth, but, also, to tie into the idea of ever burning candles of passion that she eludes to at the end of her essay. Dillard’s descriptions of the moth seem better suited to a bird than an actual moth, which seems to add to the moth’s importance and weight. Dillard uses these details to insinuate that the moth is something more than an insect, more glamorous like a bird. Dillard helps the reader conclude that the moth is more than a trivial insect, and is therefore capable of holding the emotional and passionate weight that the moth represents. This is a logical description of the moth because Dillard cannot assign the inspirational weight to the moth that she does unless it is isolated from normal moths and made better than those same moths.
2, continued
The moth’s death as described by each author, paints the vibrancy of a passionate life for Dillard, and the stoic release from a futile life for Woolf. “The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over.” Woolf is not explicitly clear whether the struggle is the moth’s inability to right himself or if it is the struggle of living or fighting against the inevitability of death. Her details center on describing “a relaxing release from life.” She ambiguously uses the word struggle to be used in the larger picture of her argument. Woolf uses an emotional appeal to the reader in the moth’s death by trying to paint death as a relaxing release that ends the struggle of a feeble existence. “Dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled and fried in a second... and then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning.” In this detail, Dillard uses the sentence structure of successive, alliterative verbs to quicken the rhythm of the piece and articulate the spontaneity and inspiration of life. With these details, Dillard talks much about the nature of her moth. Dillard’s moth is glorious, spontaneous, and transcendent of time. Dillard uses the moth-candle to invoke a diatribe on her views of inspiration, which is effectively what her moth is. Even after the death of an idea, Dillard writes, its effects are not lost, they keep on burning. Even before this moth-candle is lit, she describes the moth flying into the flame quickly. It is not so much important that the moth dies, but that it lives energetically and vibrantly as a golden creature that swoops down at a whim into a fire and blazes forever.
