Reaction to "The Death of the Moth"

In Woolf’s essay, the persona narrates his observations of the life and death of a moth. He recounts this moth’s activities and the outside forces present in the moth’s surroundings. He uses the moth as a metaphor of his own self as he speaks of the value and excitement of life followed by the forcefulness and the inescapability of death.

In the beginning, the persona talks about how this moth, a kind of moth that flies by day, is different from others of its kind. He somehow speaks of this moth’s characteristics and its uniqueness, which also seem to personify himself. He speaks of how the moth possesses traits that do not go as extreme as a butterfly’s or a moth’s that reside in the dark. This somehow describes the persona’s own personality. He is not a type whose character sticks closer to a sanguine or a melancholic disposition. He is sort of just in the middle, somehow stating that he has a balanced, calm-natured personality.

The persona also speaks of the moth’s surroundings. His description of it was of something much greater than the insect. The moth’s life seemed like such a minute detail with everything that was going around. Through his narration, he also implied that the circumstances of the outside forces are totally independent from the moth, but the moth is very much subject to these forces. This can be a comparison to his influences on the rest of the world and vice versa.

As the persona narrates the motions of the moth, he implies the great effort the moth puts into its every action. He emphasizes how the moth does so much and exerts a lot of effort to produce a force that has no effect on external circumstances. No matter how much the moth tried, its exertions are incomparable to the forces present in its surroundings. He follows this up by narrating the death of the moth, that no matter how hard the moth would have tried to fight for its life, the moth’s death would have been inevitable. In relation to the life of the persona, this narration of life and death is apt. The persona would be facing struggles and working his hardest to live his life. However, in the end, there is a force greater than him, greater than every being on this earth, that is unavoidable, and this is death. The only thing a moth or a human can do is to live life to the fullest until it is taken away.