Topic > The Death of the Moth, by Virginia Woolf - 725

The battle against death, while it can be described as magnificent, is ultimately pathetic and meaningless. Like a boulder tilting precariously off a cliff, one may display the burning desire to survive, but against the fragility and impermanence of life, this desire is a pitiful effort in the face of imminent failure. The desperation of such a situation is described in Virginia Woolf's “The Death of the Moth,” in which the moth relentlessly tries to overcome the unsolvable dilemma of breaking through the barriers that contain it and visiting the outside world. Woolf argues that because even the most extraordinary efforts cannot overpower fate, one is submerged in the chronic trap of life until almighty death arrives. Through the liveliness and desire for survival that the moth harbors to escape the barriers that contain it and the creeping power of death that ultimately overcomes its futile efforts, escape from the entrapment of fate is exemplified. Woolf uses the moth's liveliness (used frequently) and desire to escape the confines that contain it to reiterate the point that despite concentrated efforts, trepidation, and the obstacles one attempts to overcome can never truly be overcome. In the narrative, Woolf observes the activities of a diurnal moth, which struggles to escape from the confinement of the room and searches for a path to the window. The author admires the moth's liveliness and its ardent desire (frequently used) to leave the chains that bind it, but pities the moth as an insignificant and ignorant being. Woolf, using the image of the window and the world beyond to represent the obstacles one faces and the goals one aspires to, reaffirms that no mat... means of paper... has destiny, death. The struggle for life is often seen as clumsy and pathetic, like the moth demonstrating its burning desire for survival; through this narrow lens, death can be seen as the end of the chronic suffering that life brings. However, rather than one force prevailing over another as in “The Death of the Moth,” life and death are in fact simultaneous and complementary components throughout the entire span of existence. They are not two isolated variables in which their only interaction is that of death that takes life and of life that is handed over to the dominant power; on the contrary, they are two variables dependent on each other for survival. Woolf fails to see that, although all living things die or are eventually eradicated, there is always a successor, and this constant balance is what perpetuates the subsistence of the cycle of life itself..